
t\i{)\Ti^AtN^?. 



COi=^'KIGHT DKFOSn 



STUDIES 



IN THE 



SOUTH AND WEST 

WITH COMMENTS ON CANADA 

BY 

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 

AUTHOR OF "their PILGRIMAGE" ETC. 



.. JUL 13188^ '^,1 ' 



NEW YORK 
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 

1889 



^u I 



Copyright, 1889, by IlARrEu Sl Brothers. 
All rights reserved. 



PEEFATORY NOTE. 



To Henry M. Alden, Enq., Editor r>/ Harper's Monthly; 

My dear Mr. Alden,— It was at your suggestion that these 
Studies were undertaken ; all of them passed under your eye, 
except "Society in the New South," which appeared in the 
New Princeton Review. The object was not to present a com- 
prehensive account of the country South and West — which 
would have been impossible in the time and space given — but 
to note certain representative developments, tendencies, and 
dispositions, the communication of which would lead to a bet- 
ter understanding between different sections. The subjects 
chosen embrace by no means all that is important and interest- 
ing, but it is believed that they are fairly representative. The 
strongest impression produced upon the writer in making these 
Studies was that the prosperous life of the Union depends upon 
the life and dignity of the individual States. 

C. D. W. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

I. IMPRESSIONS OP THE SOUTH. IN 1885 3 

II. SOCIETY IN THE NEW SOUTH 18 

III. NEW ORLEANS 89 

IV. A VOUDOO DANCE 64 

V. THE ACADIAN LAND 75 

VI. THE SOUTH REVISITED. IN 1887 99 

VIL A FAR AND FAIR COUNTRY 118. 

VIIL ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL TOPICS. MINNESOTA AND 

WISCONSIN 151 

IX. CHICAGO— FIRST PAPER 176 

X. CHICAGO— SECOND PAPER 202 

XL THREE CAPITALS— SPRINGFIELD, INDIANAPOLIS, CO- 
LUMBUS 233 

XII. CINCINNATI AND LOUISVILLE 2G3 

XIII. MEMPHIS AND LITTLE ROCK 292 

XIV. ST. LOUIS AND KANSAS CITY 318 

XV. KENTUCKY 359 

COMMENTS ON CANADA 405 



.^^mhmt^i 



SOUTH AND WEST. 



I. 

IMPRESSIONS OF THE SOUTH. 

IN 1885. 

It is borne in upon me, as the Friends would say, 
that I ought to bear my testimony of certain impres- 
sions made by a recent visit to the Gulf States. In 
doing this I am aware that I shall be under the susj^i- 
cion of having received kindness and hospitality, and 
of forming opinions upon a brief sojourn. Both these 
facts must be confessed, and allowed their due weight 
in discrediting what I have to say. A month of my 
short visit was given to New Orleans in the spring, 
during the Exposition, and these impressions are main- 
ly of Louisiana. 

The first general impression made was that the war 
is over in spirit as well as in deed. The thoughts of 
the people are not upon the war, not much upon the 
past at all, except as their losses remind them of it, 
but upon the future, upon business, a revival of trade, 
ujDon education, and adjustment to the new state of 
things. The thoughts are not much upon politics ei- 
ther, or upon offices ; certainly they are not turned 
more in this direction than the thoughts of people at 
the North are. When we read a despatch which de- 
clares that there is immense dissatisfaction through- 
out Arkansas because offices are not dealt out more 
liberally to it, we may know that the case is exactly 



4 South and West. 

what it is in, say, Wisconsin — that a few political 
managers are grumbling, and that the great body of 
the people are indifferent, perhaps too indifferent, to 
the distribution of offices. 

Undoubtedly immense satisfaction was felt at the 
election of Mr. Cleveland, and elation of triumph in 
the belief that now the party which had been largely 
a non-particij^ant in Federal affairs would have a 
large share and weight in the administration. With 
this went, however, a new feeling of responsibility, of 
a stake in the countrj^, that manifested itself at once 
in attachment to the Union as the common possession 
of all sections. I feel sure that Louisiana, for in- 
stance, was never in its whole history, from the day 
of the Jefferson purchase, so consciously loyal to the 
United States as it is to-day. I have believed that 
for the past ten years there has been growing in this 
country a stronger feeling of nationality — a distinct 
American historic consciousness — and nowhere else 
has it developed so rapidly of late as at the South. I 
am convinced that this is a genuine development of 
attachment to the Union and of pride in the nation, 
and not in any respect a political movement for un- 
worthy purposes. I am sorry that it is necessary, for 
the sake of any lingering prejudice at the N"orth, to 
say this. But it is time that sober, thoughtful, patri- 
otic people at the North should quit representing the 
desire for office at the South as a desire to get into 
the Government saddle and ride again with a " rebel " 
impulse. It would be, indeed, a discouraging fact if 
any considerable portion of the South held aloof in 
suUenness from Federal affairs. Nor is it any just 
cause either of reproach or of uneasiness that men 



Impressions of the Soioth. 5 

Avlio were prominent in the war of the rebellion should 
be prominent now in official positions, for with a few 
exceptions the worth and weight of the South went 
into the war. It would be idle to discuss the question 
whether the masses of the South were not dragooned 
into the war by the politicians; it is sufficient to rec- 
ognize the fact that it became practically, by one 
means or another, a unanimous revolt. 

One of the strongest impressions made upon a 
Northerner who visits the extreme South now, having 
been familiar with it only by report, is the extent to 
which it suffered in the war. Of course there was 
extravagance and there were impending bankruptcies 
before the war, debt, and methods of business inher- 
ently vicious, and no doubt the war is charged with 
many losses which would have come without it, just 
as in every crisis half the failures wrongfully accuse 
the crisis. Yet, with all allowance for these things, 
the fact remains that the war practically wiped out 
personal property and the means of livelihood. The 
completeness of this loss and disaster never came 
home to me before. In some cases the picture of the 
ante helium civilization is more roseate in the minds 
of those who lost everything than cool observation of 
it would justify. But conceding this, the actual dis- 
aster needs no embellishment of the imagination. It 
seems to me, in the reverse, that the Southern people 
do not appreciate the sacrifices the North made for 
the Union. They do not, I think, realize the fact that 
the North put into the war its best blood, that every 
battle brought mourning into our households, and 
filled our churches day by day and year by year with 
the black garments of bereavement ; nor did they 



6 South and West. 

ever understand the tearful entbugiasm for the Union 
and the flag, and the unselfish devotion that underlay 
all the self-sacrifice. Some time the Southern people 
will know that it was love for the Union, and not 
hatred of the South, that made heroes of the men 
and angels of renunciation of the women. 

Yes, say our Southem friends, we can believe tbat 
you lost dear ones and were in mourning; but, after 
all, the North was prosperous ; you grew rich ; and 
when the war ended, life went on in the fulness of 
material prosperity. We lost not only our friends 
and relatives, fathers, sons, brothers, till there was 
scarcely a household that was not broken up, we lost 
not only the cause on which we had set our hearts, 
and for which we had suffered privation and hard- 
ship, were fugitives and wanderers, and endured the 
bitterness of defeat at the end, but our property was 
gone, we were stripped, with scarcely a home, and the 
whole of life had to be begun over again, under all 
the disadvantage of a sudden social revolution. 

It is not necessary to dwell upon this or to heighten 
it, but it must be borne in mind when Ave observe the 
temper of the South, and especially when we are look- 
ing for remaining bitterness, and the wonder to me is 
that after so short a space of time there is remaining 
so little of resentment or of bitter feeling over loss 
and discomfiture. I believe there is not in history 
any parallel to it. Every American must take pride 
in the fact that Americans have so risen superior to 
circumstances, and come out of trials that thoroughly 
threshed and winnowed soul and body in a temper 
so gentle and a spirit so noble. It is good stuff that 
can endure a test of this kind. 



Impressions of the South. 7 

A lady, whose family sustained all the losses that 
were possible in the war, said to me — and she said 
only what several others said in substance — " We are 
going to get more out of this war than you at the 
North, because we suffered more. We were drawn 
out of ourselves in sacrifices, and were drawn together 
in a tenderer feeling of humanity ; I do believe we 
were chastened into a higher and purer spirit." 

Let me not he misunderstood. The people who 
thus recognize the moral training of adversity and its 
effects upon character, and who are glad that slavery 
is gone, and believe that a new and better era for the 
South is at hand, would not for a moment put them- 
selves in an attitude of apology for the part they took 
in the war, nor confess that they were wrong, nor join 
in any denunciation of the leaders they followed to 
their sorrow. They simply put the past behind them, 
so far as the conduct of the present life is concerned. 
They do not propose to stamp upon memories that 
are tender and sacred, and they cherish certain senti- 
ments which are to them loyalty to their past and to 
the great passionate experiences of their lives. When 
a woman, who enlisted by the consent of Jeff Davis, 
whose name appeared for four years upon the rolls, 
and who endured all the perils and hardships of the 
conflict as a field-nurse, speaks of " President " Davis, 
what does it mean ? It is only a sentiment. This 
heroine of the war on the wrong side had in the Ex- 
position a tent, where the veterans of the Confederacy 
recorded their names. On one side, at the back of 
the tent, was a table piled with touching relics of the 
war, and above it a portrait of Robert E. Lee, wreath- 
ed in immortelles. It was surely a harmless shrine. 



8 South and West. 

On the other side was also a table, piled with fruit 
and cereals — not relics, but signs of prosperity and 
peace — and above it a portrait of Ulysses S. Grant. 
Here was the sentiment, cherished with an aching 
heart maybe, and here was the fact of the Union and 
the future. 

Another strong impression made upon the visitor 
is, as I said, that the South has entirely put the past 
behind it, and is devoting itself to the work of re- 
building on new foundations. There is no reluctance 
to talk about the war, or to discuss its conduct and 
what misfht have been. But all this is historic. It 
engenders no heat. The mind of the South to-day is 
on the development of its resources, upon the rehabili- 
tation of its affairs. I think it is rather more con- 
cerned about national prosperity than it is about the 
great problem of the negro — but I will refer to this 
further on. There goes with this interest in material 
development the same interest in the general prosper- 
ity of the country that exists at the North — the anx- 
iety that the country should prosper, acquit itself 
well, and stand well with the other nations. There 
is, of course, a sectional feeling — as to tariff, as to in- 
ternal improvements — but I do not think the Southern 
States are any more anxious to get things for them- 
selves out of the Federal Government than the North- 
ern States are. That the most extreme of Southern 
politicians have any sinister purpose (any more than 
any of the Northern " rings " on either side have) in 
wanting to "rule" the country, is, in my humble opin- 
ion, only a chimera evoked to make political capital. 

Illustrations in point as to the absolute subsidence 
of hostile intention (this phrase I know will sound 



Impressions of the South, 9 

queer in the South), and the laying aside of bitterness 
for the past, are not necessary in the presence of a 
strong general impression, but they might be gi^^en in 
great number. I note one that was significant from 
its origin, remembering, what is well known, that 
women and clergymen are always the last to experi- 
ence subsidence of hostile feeling after a civil war. 
On the Confederate Decoration Day in New Orleans 
I was standing near the Confederate monument in 
one of the cemeteries when the veterans marched in 
to decorate it. First came the veterans of the Army 
of Virginia, last those of the Army of Tennessee, and 
between them the veterans of the Grand Army of the 
Republic, Union soldiers now living in Louisiana. I 
stood beside a lady whose name, if I mentioned it, 
would be recognized as representative of a family 
which was as conspicuous, and did as much and lost 
as much, as any other in the war — a family that would 
be popularly supposed to cherish unrelenting feelings. 
As the veterans, some of them on crutches, many of 
them with empty sleeves, grouped themselves about 
the monument, we remarked upon the sight as a 
touching one, and I said: '^I see you have no address 
on Decoration Day. At the North w^e still keep up 
the custom." "No," she replied; "we have given it 
up. So many imprudent things were said that we 
thought best to discontinue the address." And then, 
after a pause, she added, thoughtfully: "Each side did 
the best it could ; it is all over and done with, and 
let's have an end of it." In the mouth of the lady 
who uttered it, the remark was very significant, but 
it expresses, I am firmly convinced, the feeling of the 
South. 



10 South and West. 

Of convsc the South will build monuments to its 
heroes, and weep over their graves, and live upon the 
memory of tlieir devotion and genius. In Heaven's 
name, why shouldn't it? Is human nature itself to 
be changed in twenty years? 

A long chapter might bo written upon the dis-like- 
ness of North and South, tlu3 difference in education, 
in training, in mental inlieritances, the misai)piv]ien- 
Bions, radical and very singular to ns, of the civiliza- 
tion of the North. We must recognize certain historic 
facts, not only the elfect of the inst itution of slavery, 
but other facts in Southern development. Suppose 
we say that an nnrcasonable ])rejudice exists, or did 
exist, about the people of the North. That i)rejudice 
is a historic fact, of which the statesman must take 
account. It enters into the question of the time 
needed to elfect the revolution now in progress. 
There are prejudices in the North about the South as 
well. We admit their existence. But what impresses 
me is the rapidity with Avhich they are disappearing 
in the South. Knowing what human nature is, it 
seems incredible that they could have subsided so 
rapidly. Enough remain for national variety, and 
enough will remain for purposes of social badinage, 
but common interests in the country and in making 
money are melting them away very fast. So far as 
loyalty to the Government is concerned, I am not 
authorized to say that it is as deeply rooted in the 
South as in the North, but it is expressed as vividly, 
and felt with a good deal of fresh enthusiasm. The 
"American" sentiment, pride in this as the most 
glorious of all lands, is genuine, and amounts to en- 
thusiasm with many who would in an argument glory 



Lnpressions of the South. 11 

in their rebellion. "We had more loyalty to our 
States than you had," said one lady, "and we have 
transferred it to the whole country." 

But the negro ? Granting that the South is loyal 
enough, wishes never another rebellion, and is satisfied 
to be rid of slavery, do not the people intend to keep 
the negroes practically a servile class, slaves in all but 
the name, and to defeat by chicanery or by force the 
legitimate results of the war and of enfranchisement ? 
This is a very large question, and cannot be discussed 
in my limits. If I were to say what my impression is, 
it would be about this : the South is quite as much 
perplexed by the negro problem as the Xortli is, and 
is very much disposed to await developments, and to 
let time solve it. One thing, however, must be ad- 
mitted in all this discussion. Tlie Southerners will 
not permit such Legislatures as those assembled once 
in Louisiana and South Carolina to rule them again. 
"Will you disfranchise the blacks by management or 
by force V" " Well, what would you do in Ohio or in 
Connecticut ? Would you be ruled by a lot of igno- 
rant field-hands allied with a gang of plunderers ?" 

In looking at this question from a Northern point 
of view we have to keep in mind two things : first, 
the Federal Government imposed colored suffrage 
without any educational qualification — a hazardous 
experiment ; in the second place, it has handed over 
the control of the colored people in each State to 
the State, under the Constitution, as completely in 
Louisiana as in New York. The responsibility is on 
Louisiana. The North cannot relieve her of it, and 
it cannot interfere, except by ways provided in the 
Constitution. In the South, where fear of a legislative 



12 South and West. 

domination has gone, the feeling between the two 
races is that of amity and mutual help. This is, I 
think, especially true in Louisiana. The Southerners 
never have forgotten the loyalty of the slaves during 
the war, the security with which the white families 
dwelt in the midst of a black population while all the 
white men were absent in the field ; they often refer 
to this. It touches w^ith tenderness the new relation 
of the races. I think there is generally in the South 
a feeling of good-will towards the negroes, a desire 
that they should develop into true manhood and 
womanhood. Undeniably there are indifference and 
neglect and some remaining suspicion about the 
schools that Northern charity has organized for the 
negroes. As to this neglect of the negro, two things 
are to be said : the whole subject of education (as we 
have understood it in the North) is comparatively new 
in the South ; and the necessity of earning a living 
since the war has distracted attention from it. But 
the general development of education is quite as ad- 
vanced as could be expected. The thoughtful and 
the leaders of opinion are fully awake to the fact that 
the mass of the people must be educated, and that the 
only settlement of the negro problem is in the educa- 
tion of the negro, intellectually and morally. They 
go further than this. They say that for the South to 
hold its own — since the negro is there and will stay 
there, and is the majority of the laboring class — it is 
necessary that the great agricultural mass of unskilled 
labor should be transformed, to a great extent, into 
a class of skilled labor, skilled on the farm, in 
shops, in factories, and that the South must have a 
highly diversified industry. To this end they want 



Impressions of the Soiith. 13 

industrial as well as ordinary schools for the colored 
people. 

It is believed that, with this education and with 
diversified industry, the social question will settle it- 
self, as it does the world over. Society cannot be 
made or unmade by legislation. In New Orleans the 
street-cars are free to all colors ; at the Exposition 
white and colored people mingled freely, talking and 
looking at what was of common interest. 

We who live in States where hotel-keepers exclude 
Hebrews cannot say much about the exclusion of 
negroes from Southern hotels. There are jDrejudices 
remaining. There are cases of hardship on the rail- 
ways, where for the same charge perfectly respectable 
and nearly white women are shut out of cars while 
there is no discrimination against dirty and disagree- 
able white people. In time all this will doubtless rest 
upon the basis it rests on at the North, and social life 
will take care of itself. It is my impression that the 
negroes are no more desirous to mingle socially with 
the whites than the whites are with the negroes. 
Among the negroes there are social grades as distinct- 
ly marked as in white society. What will be the 
final outcome of the juxtaposition nobody can tell; 
meantime it must be recorded that good-will exists 
between the races. 

I had one day at the Exposition an interesting talk 
with the colored woman in charge of the Alabama 
section of the exhibit of the colored people. This 
exhibit, made by States, was suggested and promoted 
by Major Burke in order to show the whites what the 
colored people could do, and as a stimulus to the lat- 
ter. There was not much time — only two or three 



14 South and West 

months — in which to prepare the exhibit, and it "was 
hardly a fair showing of the capacity of the colored 
people. The work was mainly women's work — em- 
broidery, sewing, household stuffs, with a little of the 
handiwork of artisans, and an exhibit of the progress 
in education ; but small as it was, it was wonderful 
as the result of only a few years of freedom. The 
Alabama exhibit was largely from Mobile, and was 
due to the energy, executive ability, and taste of the 
commissioner in charge. She was a quadroon, a wid- 
ow, a woman of cliaracter and uncommon mental and 
moral quality. She talked exceedingly well, and with 
a practical good-sense which would be notable in any- 
body. In the course of our conversation the whole 
social and political question was gone over. Herself 
a person of light color, and with a confirmed social 
prejudice against black people, she thoroughly identi- 
fied herself with the colored race, and it was evident 
that her sympathies were with them. She confirmed 
what I had heard of the social grades among colored 
people, but her whole soul was in the elevation of her 
race as a race, inclining always to their side, but with 
no trace of hostility to the whites. Many of her best 
friends were whites, and perhaps the most valuable 
part of her education was acquired in families of so- 
cial distinction. "I can illustrate," she said, "the 
state of feeling between the two races in Mobile by 
an incident last summer. There was an election com- 
ing off in the City Government, and I knew that the 
reformers wanted and needed the colored vote. I 
went, therefore, to some of the chief men, who knew 
me and had confidence in me, for I had had business 
relations with many of them [she had kept a fashion- 



Impressions of the South. 15 

able boarcling-liouse], and told them that I wanted the 
Opera-house for the colored people to give an enter- 
tainment and exhibition in. The request was extraor- 
dinary. Nobody but white people had ever been ad- 
mitted to the Opera-house. But, after some hesitation 
and consultation, the request was granted. We gave 
the exhibition, and the white people all attended. It 
was really a beautiful affair, lovely tableaux, with 
gorgeous dresses, recitations, etc., and everybody was 
astonished that the colored people had so much taste 
and talent, and had got on so far in education. They 
said they were delighted and surprised, and they liked 
it so well that they wanted the entertainment repeated 
— it was given for one of our charities — but I was too 
wise for that. I didn't want to run the chance of de- 
stroying the impression by repeating, and I said we 
would wait a while, and then show them something 
better. Well, the election came off in August, and 
everything went all right, and now the colored people 
in Mobile can have anything they want. There is the 
best feeling between the races. I tell you we should 
get on beautifully if the politicians would let us alone. 
It is politics that has made all the trouble in Alabama 
and in Mobile." And I learned that in Mobile, as in 
many other places, the negroes were put in minor offi- 
cial positions, the duties of which they were capable 
of discharging, and had places in the police. 

On " Louisiana Day " in the Exposition the colored 
citizens took their full share of the parade and the 
honors. Their societies marched with the others, and 
the races mingled on the grounds in unconscious equal- 
ity of privileges. Speeches were made, glorifying the 
State and its history, by able speakers, the Governor 



10 jSou//i and lIV.v/. 

ninoHi:,- (l\oni; bu( it, Mas tho teslimony o( Doinoorats 
of iiiuloiibtod Soutliorii ortliodoxy that tho lioiiors of 
tlio Jay woro oarriod olY by a colored olorg-yinati, an 
odiicatod man, who nnitod clociuonoe with excellent 
good-sonso, and who spoke as :i citizen of Louisiana, 
]>roud of his native IState, dwellini;- with richness of 
allusion upon its history. It was a. j^crfcctly manly 
speech in the assertion of the rights and the i)osition 
of his race, and it breathed throughout the same spirit 
of good-will and amity in a common hope of progress 
that characterized the talk of the colored Avoman com- 
missioner of jMobile. It was warmly applauded, and 
accepted, so far as I heard, as a matter of course. 

Xo one, however, can see the mass of colored peo- 
ple in the cities and on the plantations, the ignorant 
mass, slowly coming to moral consciousness, without 
a recognition of the magnitude of the negro problem. 
I am glad that my iState has not the practical settle- 
ment of it, and I cannot do less than ex])ress profound 
sympathy with the people who have. They inherit 
the most ditlicult task now anywhere visible in human 
progress. They will make mistakes, and they Avill do 
injustice now and then; but one feels like turning 
away from these, and thanking God for what they 
do well. 

There are many encouraging things in the condi- 
tion of the negro. Good-will, generally, among the 
people where he lives is one thing; their tolerance of 
his weaknesses and failings is another. He is him- 
self, here and there, making heroic sacrilices to obtain 
an education. TJiere are negro mothers earning mon- 
ey at the wash-tub to keep their boys at school and 
in colleo-e. In the South-west there is such a call for 



Imj/ressions of the South. 17 

colon;d tcachors that tho Straight Univorsity in Xow 
Orleans, wliicli has about five hundred pujiils, cannot 
bogirj to supply tho demand, althou;^h the teachers, 
male and female, are paid from thirty-five to fifty 
dollars a month. A colored graduate of this school a 
year ago is now superintendent of the colored scliools 
in Memphis, at a salary of ^1200 a year. 

Are these exceptional cases ? Well, I siippone it is 
also exceptional to see a colored clergyman in Ids sur- 
plice seated in the chancel of the most important white 
Episcopal church in New Orleans, assisting in the 
service; hut it is significant. Tliere are many good 
auguries to be drawn from the improved condition of 
the negroes on the plantations, the more rational and 
less emotional character of their religious services, 
and the hold of the temperance movement on all 
classes in the country places. 
2 



II. 

SOCIETY IN THE NEW SOUTH. 

The American Revolution made less social change 
in the South than in the North. Under conservative 
influences the South developed her social life with 
little alteration in form and spirit — allowing for the 
decay that always attends conservatism — down to the 
Civil War. The social revolution which was in fact 
accomplished contemporaneously with the political 
severance from Great Britain, in the North, was not 
effected in the South until Lee offered his sword to 
Grant, and Grant told him to keep it and beat it into 
a ploughshare. The change had indeed been inevita- 
ble, and ripening for four years, but it was at that 
moment universally recognized. Impossible, of course, 
except by the removal of slavery, it is not wholly ac- 
counted for by the removal of slavery ; it results also 
from an economical and political revolution, and from 
a total alteration of the- relations of the South to the 
rest of the world. The story of this social change 
will be one of the most marvellous the historian has 
to deal with. 

Provincial is a comparative term. All England is 
provincial to the Londoner, all America to the Eng- 
lishman. Perhaps New York looks upon Philadelphia 
as provincial ; and if Chicago is forced to admit that 
Boston resembles ancient Athens, then Athens, by the 
Chicago standard, must have been a very provincial 



Society in the New South. 19 

city. The root of provincialism is localism, or a con- 
dition of being on one side and apart from the gen- 
^eral movement of contemporary life. In this sense, 
and compared with the North in its absolute openness 
to every wind from all parts of the globe, the South 
was provincial. Provincialism may have its decided 
advantages, and it may nurture many superior virtues 
and produce a social state that is as charming as it is 
interesting, but along with it goes a certain self-ap- 
preciation, which ultracosmopolitan critics would call 
Concord-like, that seems exaggerated to outsiders. 

The South, and notably Virginia and South Caro- 
lina, cherished English traditions long after the politi- 
cal relation was severed. But it kept the traditions 
of the time of the separation, and did not share the 
literary and political evolution of England. Slavery 
divided it from the North in sympathy, and slavery, 
by excluding European emigration, shut out the South 
from the influence of the new ideas germinating in 
Europe. It was not exactly true to say that the li- 
brary of the Southern gentleman stoj^ped with the 
publications current in the reign of George the Third, 
but, well stocked as it was with the classics and with 
the English literature become classic, it was not likely 
to contain much of later date than the Reform Bill 
in England and the beginning of the abolition move- 
ment in the North. The pages of De Bozo's Heview 
attest the ambition and direction of Southern scholar- 
ship — a scholarship not much troubled by the new 
problems that were at the time rending England and 
the North. The young men who still went abroad to 
be educated brought back with them the traditions 
and flavor of the old England and not the spirit of 



20 South and West. 

the new, the traditions of the universities and not the 
new life of research and doubt in them. The con- 
servatism of the Southern life was so strong that the 
students at Northern colleges returned unchanged by 
contact with a different civilization. The South met 
the North in business and in politics, and in a limited 
social intercourse, but from one cause and another for 
three-quarters of a century it was practically isolated, 
and consequently developed a peculiar social life. 

One result of this isolation was that the South was 
more homogeneous than the North, and perhaps more 
distinctly American in its characteristics. This was 
to be expected, since it had one common and over- 
mastering interest in slavery, had little foreign ad- 
mixture, and was removed from the currents of com- 
merce and the disturbing ideas of Reform. The 
South, so far as society was concerned, was an agri- 
cultural aristocracy, based upon a perfectly defined 
lowest class in the slaves, and holding all trade, com- 
merce, and industrial and mechanical pursuits in true 
mediaeval contempt. Its literature was monarchical, 
tempered by some Jeffersonian, doctrinaire notions of 
the rights of man, which were satisfied, however, by 
an insistence upon the sovereignty of the States, and 
by equal privileges to a certain social order in each 
State. Looked at, then, from the outside, the South 
appeared to be homogeneous, but from its own point 
of view, socially, it was not at all so. Social life in 
these jealously independent States developed almost 
as freely and variously as it did in the Middle Ages 
in the free cities of Italy. Virginia was not at all 
like South Carolina (except in one common interest), 
and Louisiana — especially in its centre, New Orleans 



Society in the New South. 21 

— more cosmopolitan than any other part of the South 
by reason of its foreign elements, more closely always 
in sympathy with Paris than with New York or Bos- 
ton, was widely, in its social life, separated from its 
sisters. Indeed, in early days, before the slavery agi- 
tation, there was, owing to the heritage of English 
traditions, more in common between Boston and 
Charleston than between New Orleans and Charles- 
ton. And later, there was a marked social difference 
between towns and cities near together — as, for in- 
stance, between agricultural Lexington and commer- 
cial Louisville, in Kentucky. 

The historian who writes the social life of the 
Southern States will be embarrassed with romantic 
and picturesque material. Nowhere else in this level- 
ling age will he find a community developing so much 
of the dramatic, so much splendor and such pathetic 
contrasts in the highest social cultivation, as in the 
plantation and city life of South Carolina. Already, 
in regarding it, it assumes an air of unreality, and 
vanishes in its strong lights and heavy shades like a 
dream of the chivalric age. An allusion to its char- 
acter is sufficient for the purposes of this paper. Per- 
sons are still alive who saw the prodigal style of living 
and the reckless hospitality of the planters in those 
days, when in the Charleston and Sea Island mansions 
the guests constantly entertained were only outnum- 
bered by the swarms of servants ; when it was not 
incongruous and scarcely ostentatious that the courtly 
company, which had the fine and free manner of an- 
other age, should dine off gold and silver plate ; and 
when all that wealth and luxury could suggest was 
lavished in a princely magnificence that was almost 



22 South and West. 

barbaric in its profusion. The young men were edu- 
cated in England ; the young women were reared like 
helpless princesses, with a servant for every want and 
whim ; it was a day of elegant accomplishments and 
deferential manners, but the men gamed like Fox and 
drank like Sheridan, and the duel was the ordinary 
arbiter of any difference of opinion or of any point of 
honor. Not even slavery itself could support exist- 
ence on such a scale, and even before the v/ar it be- 
gan to give way to the conditions of our modern life. 
And now that old peculiar civilization of South Caro- 
lina belongs to romance. It can never be repeated, 
even by the aid of such gigantic fortunes as are now 
accumulating in the North. 

The agricultural life of Virginia appeals with 
scarcely less attraction to the imagination of the 
novelist. Mr. Thackeray caught the flavor of it in 
his "Virginians" from an actual study of it in the old 
houses, Avhen it was becoming a faded memory. The 
vast estates — principalities in size — with troops of 
slaves attached to each plantation; the hospitality, 
less costly, but as free as that of South Carolina ; the 
land in the hands of a few people ; politics and society 
controlled by a small number of historic families, in- 
termarried until all Virginians of a certain grade were 
related — all this forms a picture as feudal-like and 
foreign to this age as can be imagined. The writer 
recently read the will of a country gentleman of the 
last century in Virginia, which raises a distinct image 
of the landed aristocracy of the time. It devised his 
plantation of six thousand acres with its slaves at- 
tached, his plantation of eighteen hundred acres and 
slaves, his plantation of twelve hundred acres and 



Society in the Neuo South. 23 

slaves, with other farms and outlying property ; it 
mentioned all the cattle, sheep, and hogs, the riding- 
horses in stables, the racing-steeds, the several coach- 
es with the six horses that drew them (an acknowl- 
edgment of the wretched state of the roads), and so 
on in all the details of a vast domain. All the slaves 
are called by name, all the farming implements were 
enumerated, and all the homely articles of furniture 
down to the beds and kitchen utensils. This whole 
structure of a unique civilization is practically swept 
away now, and with it the peculiar social life it pro- 
duced. Let us pause a moment upon a few details of 
it, as it had its highest development in Eastern Vir- 
ginia. 

The family w^as the fetich. In this high social caste 
the estates were entailed to the limit of the law, for 
one generation, and this entail was commonly relig- 
iously renewed by the heir. It w^as not expected that 
a widow would remarry ; as a rule she did not, and 
it was almost a matter of course that the will of the 
husband should make the enjoyment of even the en- 
tailed estate dependent upon the non-marriage of the 
widow. These prohibitions upon her freedom of 
choice were not considered singular or cruel in a 
society whose chief gospel was the preservation of 
the family name. 

The planters lived more simply than the great sea- 
board planters of South Carolina and Georgia, with 
not less pride, but with less ostentation and show. 
The houses were of the accej^ted colonial pattern, 
square, with four rooms on a floor, but with wide 
galleries (wherein they differed from the colonial 
houses in New England), and sometimes with addi- 



24 South and West. 

tions in the way of offices and lodging-rooms. The 
furniture was very simple and plain — a few hundred 
dollars would cover the cost of it in most mansions. 
There were not in all Virginia more than two or 
three magnificent houses. It was the taste of gen- 
tlemen to adorn the ground in front of the house 
with evergreens, with the locust and acanthus, and 
perhaps the maple-trees not native to the spot ; while 
the oak, which is nowhere more stately and noble 
than in Virginia, was never seen on the lawn or the 
drive-way, but might be found about the "quarters," 
or in an adjacent forest park. As the interior of the 
houses was plain, so the taste of the people was sim- 
ple in the matter of ornament — jewellery was very 
little worn ; in fact, it is almost literally true that 
there were in Virginia no family jewels. 

So thoroughly did this society believe in itself and 
keep to its traditions that the young gentleman of the 
house, educated in England, brought on his return 
nothing foreign home with him — no foreign tastes, no 
bric-a-brac for his home, and never a foreign wife. 
He came back unchanged, and married the cousin he 
met at the first country dance he went to. 

The pride of the people, which was intense, did not 
manifest itself in ways that are common elsewhere — 
it was sufficient to itself in its own homespun inde- 
pendence. What would make one distinguished else- 
where was powerless here. Literary talent, and even 
acquired wealth, gave no distinction; aside from fam- 
ily and membership of the caste, nothing gave it to 
any native or visitor. There was no lion-hunting, no 
desire whatever to attract the attention of, or to pay 
any deference to, men of letters. If a member of so- 



Society in the New South. 25 

ciety happened to be distinguished in letters or in 
scholarship, it made not the slightest difference in his 
social appreciation. There was absolutely no encour- 
agement for men of letters, and consequently there 
was no literary class and little literature. There was 
only one thing that gave a man any distinction in this 
society, except a long pedigree, and that was the tal- 
ent of oratory — that was prized, for that was con- 
nected with prestige in the State and the politics of 
the dominant class. The planters took few newspa- 
pers, and read those few very little. They were a 
fox-hunting, convivial race, generally Whig in poli- 
tics, always orthodox in religion. The man of culti- 
vation was rare, and, if he was cultivated, it was usu- 
ally only on a single subject. But the planter might 
be an astute politician, and a man of wide knowledge 
and influence in public affairs. There was one thing, 
however, that was held in almost equal value with 
pedigree, and that was female beauty. There was al- 
ways the recognized " belle," the beauty of the day, 
who was the toast and the theme of talk, whose mem- 
ory was always green with her chivalrous contempo- 
raries ; the veterans liked to recall over the old Ma- 
deira the wit and charms of the raving beauties who 
had long gone the way of the famous vintages of the 
cellar. 

The position of the clergyman in the Episcopal 
Church was very much what his position was in Eng- 
land in the time of James II. He was patronized and 
paid like any other adjunct of a well-ordered society. 
If he did not satisfy his masters he was quietly in- 
formed that he could probably be more useful else- 
where. If he was acceptable, one element of his pop- 



26 SoittJi and West. 

ularity was that he rode to hounds and could tell a 
good story over the wine at dinner. 

The pride of this society preserved itself in a cer- 
tain high, chivalrous state. If any of its members 
were poor, as most of them became after the war, 
they took a certain pride in their poverty. They were 
too proud to enter into a vulgar struggle to be other- 
wise, and they were too old to learn the habit of labor. 
No such thing was known in it as scandal. If any 
breach of morals occurred, it was apt to be acknowl- 
edged with a Spartan regard for truth, and defiantly 
published by the families affected, who announced that 
they accepted the humiliation of it. Scandal there 
should be none. In that caste the character of women 
was not even to be the subject of talk in private gos- 
sip and innuendo. No breach of social caste was pos- 
sible. The overseer, for instance, and the descend- 
ants of the overseer, however rich, or well educated, 
or accomplished they might become, could never mar- 
ry into the select class. An alliance of this sort 
doomed the offender to an absolute and permanent 
loss of .social position. This was the rule. Beauty 
could no more gain entrance there than wealth. 

This plantation life, of which so much has been 
written, was repeated with variations all over the 
South. In Louisiana and lower Mississippi it was 
more prodigal than in Virginia. To a great extent 
its tone was determined by a relaxing climate, and it 
must be confessed that it had in it an element of the 
irresponsible — of the "after us the deluge." The 
whole system wanted thrift and, to an English or 
Northern visitor, certain conditions of comfort. Yet 
everybody acknowledged its fascination; for there 



Society in the Neio South. 27 

was nowhere else such a display of open-hearted hos- 
pitality. An invitation to visit meant an invitation 
to stay indefinitely. The longer the visit lasted, if it 
ran into months, the better were the entertainers 
pleased. It was an uncalculating hospitality, and 
possibly it went along with littleness and meanness, 
in some directions, that were no more creditable than 
the alleged meanness of the New England farmer. 
At any rate, it was not a systematized generosity. 
The hospitality had somewhat the character of a new 
country and of a society not crowded. Company was 
welcome on the vast, isolated plantations. Society 
also was really small, composed of a few families, and 
intercourse by long visits and profuse entertainments 
was natural and even necessary. 

This social aristocracy had the faults as well as the 
virtues of an aristocracy so formed. One fault was 
an undue sense of superiority, a sense nurtured by iso- 
lation from the intellectual contests and the illusion- 
destroying tests of modern life. And this sense of 
superiority diffused itself downward through the mass 
of the Southern population. The slave of a great 
family was proud; he held himself very much above 
the poor white, and he would not associate with the 
slave of the small farmer; and. the poor white never 
doubted his own superiority to the ISTorthern " mud- 
sill" — as the phrase of the day was. The whole life 
was somehow pitched to a romantic key, and often 
there was a queer contrast between the Gascon-like 
pretension and the reality — all the more because of a 
certain sincerity and single-mindedness that was un- 
able to see the anachronism of trying to live in the 
spirit of Scott's romances in our day and generation. 



28 South and West 

But with all allowance for this, there was a real basis 
for romance in the impulsive, sun-nurtured people, in 
the conflict between the two distinct races, and in the 
system of labor that was an anomaly in modern life. 
With the downfall of this system it was inevitable 
that the social state should radically change, and 
especially as this downfall w^as sudden and by vio- 
lence, and in a struggle that left the South impover- 
ished, and reduced to the rank of bread-winners those 
who had always regarded labor as a thing impossible 
for themselves. 

As a necessary effect of this change, the dignity of 
the agricultural interest was lowered, and trade and 
industrial pursuits Avere elevated. Labor itself was 
perforce dignified. To earn one's living by actual 
work, in the shop, w^ith the needle, by the pen, in the 
counting-house or school, in any honorable way, w^as 
a lot accepted with cheerful courage. And it is to 
the credit of all concerned that reduced circumstances 
and the necessity of work for daily bread have not 
thus far cost men and women in Southern society 
their social position. Work was a necessity of the 
situation, and the spirit in which the new life was 
taken up brought out the solid qualities of the race. 
In a few trying years they had to reverse the habits 
and traditions of a century. I think the honest ob- 
server will acknowledge that they have accomplished 
this without loss of that social elasticity and charm 
which were heretofore supposed to depend very much 
upon the artificial state of slave labor. And they 
have gained much. They have gained in losing a 
kind of suspicion that was inevitable in the isolation 
of their peculiar institution. They have gained free- 



Society in the New South. 29 

clom of thought and action in all the fields of modern 
endeavor, in the industrial arts, in science, in literature. 
And the fruits of this enlargement must add greatly 
to the industrial and intellectual wealth of the world. 
Society itself in the new South has cut loose from 
its old moorings, but it is still in a transition state, 
and offers the most interesting study of tendencies 
and possibilities. Its danger, of course, is that of the 
North — a drift into materialism, into a mere struggle 
for wealth, undue importance attached to money, and 
a loss of public spirit in the selfish accumulation of 
property. Unfortunately, in the transition of twenty 
years the higher education has been neglected. The 
young men of this generation have not given even as 
much attention to intellectual pursuits as their fathers 
gave. ISTeither in polite letters nor in politics and 
political history have they had the same training. 
They have been too busy in the hard struggle for a 
living. It is true at the North that the young men in 
business are not so well educated, not so well read, as 
the young women of their own rank in society. And 
I suspect that this is still more true in the South. It 
is not uncommon to find in this generation Southern 
young women who add to sincerity, openness and 
frankness of manner; to the charm born of the wish 
to please, the graces of cultivation; who know French 
like their native tongue, who are well acquainted with 
the French and German literatures, who are well read 
in the English classics — though perhaps guiltless of 
much familiarity with our modern American litera- 
ture. But taking the South at large, the schools for 
either sex are far behind those of the North both in 
discipline and range. And this is especially to be 



30 South and West 

regretted, since the higher education is an absolute 
necessity to counteract the intellectual demoralization 
of the newly come industrial spirit. 

We have yet to study the compensations left to 
the South in their century of isolation from this in- 
dustrial spirit, and from the absolutely free inquiry 
of our modern life. Shall we find something sweet 
and sound there, that will yet be a powerful conserv- 
ative influence in the republic ? "Will it not be 
strange, said a distinguished biblical scholar and an 
old-time antislavery radical, if we have to depend, 
after all, upon the orthodox conservatism of the South? 
For it is to be noted that the Southern pulpit holds 
still the traditions of the old theology, and the mass 
of Southern Christians are still undisturbed by doubts. 
They are no more troubled by agnosticism in religion 
than by altruism in sociology. There remains a great 
mass of sound and simple faith. We are not discuss- 
ing either the advantage or the danger of disturbing 
thought, or any question of morality or of the con- 
duct of life, nor the shield or the peril of ignorance — 
it is simply a matter of fact that the South is compar- 
atively free from what is called modern doubt. 

Another fact is noticeable. The South is not and 
never has been disturbed by "isms" of any sort. 
"Spiritualism" or "Spiritism", has absolutely no 
lodgement there. It has not even appealed in any 
w^ay to the excitable and superstitious colored race. In- 
quiry failed to discover to the writer any trace of this 
delusion among whites or blacks. Society has never 
been agitated on the important subjects of graham- 
bread or of the divided skirt. The temperance ques- 
tion has forced itself upon the attention of deeply 



Society in the New South. 31 

drinking communities here and there. Usually it has 
been treated in a very common-sense way, and not as 
a matter of politics. Fanaticism may sometimes be 
a necessity against an overwhelming evil ; but the 
writer knows of communities in the South that have 
effected a practical reform in liquor selling and drink- 
ing without fanatical excitement. Bar-room drink- 
ing is a fearful curse in Southern cities, as it is in 
Northern ; it is an evil that the colored people fall 
into easily, but it is beginning to be met in some 
Southern localities in a resolute and sensible manner. 
The students of what we like to call "progress," 
especially if they are disciples of Mr. Ruskin, have 
an admirable field of investigation in the contrast of 
the social, economic, and educational structure of the 
North and the South at the close of the war. After 
a century of free schools, perpetual intellectual agi- 
tation, extraordinary enterprise in every domain of 
thought and material achievement, the North pre- 
sented a spectacle at once of the highest hope and the 
gravest anxiety. What diversity of life! What ful- 
ness! What intellectual and even social emancipa- 
tion! What reforms, called by one party Heaven- 
sent, and by the other reforms against nature! What 
agitations, doubts, contempt of authority! What wild 
attempts to conduct life on no basis philosophic or 
divine! And yet what prosperity, what charities, 
what a marvellous growth, what an improvement in 
physical life! With better knowledge of sanitary 
conditions and of the culinary art, what an increase 
of beauty in women and of stalwartness in men! For 
beauty and physical comeliness, it must be acknowl- 
edged (parenthetically), largely depend upon food. 



32 South and West. 

It is in the impoverislied parts of the country, wheth- 
er South or North, the sandy barrens, and the still 
vast regions where cooking is an unknown art, that 
scrawny and dyspeptic men and women abound — the 
sallow-faced, flat-chested, spindle-limbed. 

This Northern picture is a veritable nineteenth-cen- 
tury spectacle. Side by side with it was the other 
society, also covering a vast domain, that was in many 
respects a projection of the eighteenth century into 
the nineteenth. It had much of the conservatism, 
and preserved something of the manners, of the eigh- 
teenth century, and lacked a good deal the so-called 
spirit of the age of the nineteenth, together with its 
doubts, its isms, its delusions, its energies. Life in the 
South is still on simpler terms than in the North, and 
society is not so complex. I am inclined to think it 
is a little more natural, more sincere in manner though 
not in fact, more frank and impulsive. One would 
hesitate to use the word unworldly with regard to it, 
but it may be less calculating. A bungling male ob- 
server would be certain to get himself into trouble by 
expressing an opinion about women in any part of the 
world; but women make society, and to discuss society 
at all is to discuss them. It is probably true that the 
education of women at the South, taken at large, is 
more superficial than at the North, lacking in purpose, 
in discipline, in intellectual vigor. The aim of the 
old civilization was to develop the graces of life, to 
make women attractive, charming, good talkers (but 
not too learned), graceful, and entertaining comjDan- 
ions. When the main object is to charm and please, 
society is certain to be agreeable. In Southern soci- 
ety beauty, physical beauty, was and is much thought 



Society in the New South. 33 

of, much talked of. The " belle " was an institution, 
and is yet. The belle of one city or village had a 
wide reputation, and trains of admirers wherever she 
went — in short, a veritable career, and was probably 
better known than a poetess at the North. She not 
only ruled in her day, but she left a memory which 
became a romance to the next generation. There 
went along with such careers a certain lightness and 
gayety of life, and now and again a good deal of pa- 
thos and tragedy. 

With all its social accomplishments, its love of col- 
or, its climatic tendency to the sensuous side of life, 
the South has been unexpectedly wanting in a fine- 
art development — namely, in music and pictorial art. 
Culture of this sort has been slow enough in the 
North, and only lately has had any solidity or been 
much diffused. The love of art, and especially of art 
decoration, was greatly quickened by the Philadelphia 
Exhibition, and the comparatively recent infusion of 
German music has begun to elevate the taste. But I 
imagine that while the South naturally was fond of 
music of a light sort, and New Orleans could sustain 
and almost make native the French opera when New 
York failed entirely to popularize any sort of opera, 
the musical taste was generally very rudimentary; 
and the poverty in respect to pictures and engravings 
was more marked still. In a few great houses were 
fine paintings, brought over from Europe, and here 
and there a noble family portrait. But the traveller 
to-day will go through city after city, and village af- 
ter village, and find no art-shop (as he may look in 
vain in large cities for any sort of book-store except 
a news - room) ; rarely will see an etching or a fine 
3 



34 South and West. 

engraving ; and he will be led to doubt if the taste 
for either existed to any great degree before the war. 
Of course he will remember that taste and knowledge 
in the fine arts may be said in the Xorth to be recent 
acquirements, and that, meantime, the South has been 
impoverished and struggling in a political and social 
revolution. 

Slavery and isolation and a semi-feudal state have 
left traces that must long continue to modify social 
life in the South, and that may not wear out for a 
century to come. The new life must also differ from 
that in the North by reason of climate, and on account 
of the presence of the alien, insouciant colored race. 
The vast black population, however it may change, 
and however education may influence it, must remain 
a powerful determining factor. The body of the 
slaves, themselves inert, and with no voice in affairs, 
inevitably influenced life, the character of civiliza- 
tion, manners, even speech itself. "With slavery end- 
ed, the Southern whites are emancipated, and the in- 
fluence of the alien race will be other than what it 
was, but it cannot fail to affect the tone of life in the 
States where it is a large element. 

When, however, we have made all allowance for 
difference in climate, difference in traditions, total 
difference in the way of looking at life for a century, 
it is plain to be seen that a great transformation is 
taking place in the South, and that Southern society 
and ISTorthern society are becoming every day more 
and more alike. I know there are those, and South- 
erners, too, who insist that we are still two peoples, 
with more points of difference than of resemblance — 
certainly farther apart than Gascons and Bretons. 



Society in the New South, 35 

This seems to me not true in general, though it may 
be of a portion of the passing generation. Of course 
there is difference in temperament, and peculiarities 
of speech and manner remain and will continue, as 
they exist in different portions of the North — the ac- 
cent of the Bostonian differs from that of the Phila- 
delphian, and the inhabitant of Richmond is known 
by his speech as neither of New Orleans nor New 
York. But the influence of economic laws, of com- 
mon political action, of interest and pride in one coun- 
try, is stronger than local bias in such an age of inter- 
communication as this. The great barrier between 
North and South having been removed, social assimi- 
lation must go on. It is true that the small farmer 
in Vermont, and the small planter in Georgia, and the 
village life in the two States, will preserve their strong 
contrasts. But that which, without clearly defining, 
we call society becomes yearly more and more alike 
North and South. It is becoming more and more dif- 
ficult to tell in any summer assembly — at Newport, 
the White Sulphur, Saratoga, Bar Harbor — by physi- 
ognomy, dress, or manner, a person's birthplace. 
There are noticeable fewer distinctive traits that 
enable us to say with certainty that one is from the 
South, or the West, or the East. No doubt the type 
at such a Southern resort as the White Sulphur is 
more distinctly American than at such a Northern 
resort as Saratoga. We are prone to make a good 
deal of local peculiarities, but when we look at the 
matter broadly and consider the vastness of our ter- 
ritory and the varieties of climate, it is marvellous 
that there is so little difference in speech, manner, 
and appearance. Contrast us with Europe and its va- 



36 SoiUh and West. 

rious irreconcilable races occupying less territory. 
Even little England offers greater variety than the 
United States. When we think of our large, widely 
scattered population, the wonder is that we do not 
differ more. 

Southern society has always had a certain prestige 
in the North. One reason for this was the fact that 
the ruling class South had more leisure for social life. 
Climate, also, had much to do in softening manners, 
making the temperament ardent, and at the same 
time producing that leisurely movement which is es- 
sential to a polished life. It is probably true, also, 
that mere wealth was less a passport to social dis- 
tinction than at the North, or than it has become at 
the North ; that is to say, family, or a certain charm 
of breeding, or the talent of being agreeable, or the 
gift of cleverness, or of beauty, were necessary, and 
money was not. In this respect it seems to be true 
that social life is changing at the South ; that is to 
say, money is getting to have the social power in 
New Orleans that it has in New York. It is inevita- 
ble in a commercial and industrial community that 
money should have a controlling power, as it is re- 
grettable that the enjoyment of its power very slowly 
admits a sense of its responsibility. The old tradi- 
tions of the South having been broken down, and 
nearly all attention being turned to the necessity of 
making money, it must follow that mere wealth will 
rise as a social factor. Herein lies one danger to 
what was best in the old regime. Another danger is 
that it must be put to the test of the ideas, the agita- 
tions, the elements of doubt and disintegration that 
seem inseparable to " progress," which give Northern 



Society in the New South. 37 

society its present complexity, and just cause of 
alarm to all who watch its headlong career. Fulness 
of life is accepted as desirable, but it has its dangers. 

Within the past five years social intercourse be- 
tween North and South has been greatly increased. 
Northerners who felt strongly about the Union and 
about slavery, and took up the cause of the freedman, 
and were accustomed all their lives to absolute free 
speech, were not comfortable in the post-reconstruc- 
tion atmosphere. Perhaps they expected too much 
of human nature — a too sudden subsidence of sus- 
picion and resentment. They felt that they were 
not welcome socially, however much their capital and 
business energy were desired. On the other hand, 
most Southerners were too poor to travel in the 
North, as they did formerly. But all these points 
have been turned. Social intercourse and travel are 
renewed. If difficulties and alienations remain they 
are sporadic, and melting away. The harshness of 
the Northern winter cliraat* has turned a stream of 
travel and occupation to the Gulf States, and par- 
ticularly to Florida, which is indeed now scarcely a 
Southern State except in climate. The Atlanta and 
New Orleans Exhibitions did much to bring people 
of all sections together socially. With returning 
financial prosperity all the Northern summer resorts 
have seen increasing numbers of Southern people 
seeking health and pleasure. I believe that during 
the past summer more Southerners have been travel- 
ling and visiting in the North than ever before. 

This social intermingling is significant in itself, and 
of the utmost importance for the removal of linger- 
ing misunderstandings. They who learn to like each 



38 South and West. 

other personally will be tolerant in political differ- 
ences, and helpful and unsuspicious in the very grave 
problems that rest upon the late slave States. Differ- 
ences of opinion and different interests will exist, but 
surely love is stronger than liate, and sympathy and 
kindness are better solvents than alienation and criti- 
cism. The play of social forces is very powerful in 
such a republic as ours, and there is certainly reason 
to believe that they will be exerted now in behalf of 
that cordial appreciation of what is good and that 
toleration of traditional differences which are neces- 
sary to a people indissolubiy bound together in one 
national destiny. Alienated for a century, the society 
of the Xorth and the society of the South have some- 
thing to forget but more to gain in the union that 
cverv dav becomes closer. 



III. 

NEW ORLEANS. 

The first time I saw New Orleans was on a Sunday 
morning in the month of 3IarcLi. "\Vo alighted from 
the train at the foot of Esplanade Street, and walked 
along through the French Market, and by Jackson 
Square to the Hotel Royal. The morning, after rain, 
was charming ; there was a fresh breeze from the 
river; the foliage was a tender green; in the balconies 
and on the mouldering window-ledges flowers bloomed, 
and in the decaying courts climbing- roses mingled 
their perfume with the orange; the shops were open; 
ladies tripped along from early mass or to early mar- 
ket; there was a twittering in the square and in the 
sweet old gardens ; caged birds sang and screamed 
the songs of South America and the tropics; the lan- 
guage heard on all sides was French or the degraded 
jargon which the easy-going African has manufact- 
ured out of the tongue of Bienville. Nothing could 
be more shabby than the streets, ill-paved, with undu- 
lating sidewalks and open gutters green with slime, 
and both stealing and giving odor ; little canals in 
which the cat, become the companion of the craAvfish, 
and the vegetable in decay sought in vain a current 
to oblivion; the streets with rows of one-story houses, 
wooden, with green doors and batten window-shutters, 
or brick, with the painted stucco peeling off, the line 
broken often by an edifice of two stories, with gal- 



40 South and West. 

leries and delicate tracery of wrought - iron, houses 
pink and yellow and brown and gray — colors all 
blending and harmonious when we get a long vista of 
them and lose the details of view in the broad artistic 
effect. Nothing could be shabbier than the streets, 
unless it is the tumble-down, picturesque old market, 
bright with flowers and vegetables and many-hued 
fish, and enlivened by the genial African, who in the 
New World experiments in all colors, from coal black 
to the pale pink of the sea-shell, to find one that suits 
his mobile nature. I liked it all from the first; I lin- 
gered long in that morning walk, liking it more and 
more, in spite of its shabbiness, but utterly unable to 
say then or ever since wherein its charm lies. I sup- 
pose we are all wrongly made up and have a fallen 
nature; else why is it that while the most thrifty and 
neat and orderly city onl}^ wins our approval, and 
perhaps gratifies us intellectually, such a thriftless, 
battered and stained, and lazy old place as the French 
quarter of New Orleans takes our hearts ? 

I never could find out exactly where New Orleans 
is. I have looked for it on the map without much 
enlightenment. It is dropped down there somewhere 
in the marshes of the Mississippi and the bayous and 
lakes. It is below the one, and tangled up among the 
others, or it might some day float out to the Gulf and 
disappear. How the Mississippi gets out I never 
could discover. When it first comes in sight of the 
town it is running east; at Carrollton it abruptly turns 
its rapid, broad, yellow flood and runs south, turns 
presently eastward, circles a great portion of the city, 
then makes a bold push for the north in order to 
avoid Algiers and reach the foot of Canal Street, and 



JS'ew Orleans. 41 

encountering there the heart of the town, it sheers off 
again along the old French quarter and Jackson 
Square due east, and goes no one knows where, except 
perhaps Mr. Eads. 

The city is supposed to lie in this bend of the river, 
but it in fact extends eastward along the bank down 
to the Barracks, and spreads backward towards Lake 
Pontchartrain over a vast area, and includes some 
very good snipe-shooting. 

Although New Orleans has only about a quarter of 
a million of inhabitants, and so many only in the win- 
ter, it is larger than Pekin, and I believe than Phila- 
delphia, having an area of about one hundred and 
five square miles. From CarroUton to the Barracks, 
which are not far from the Battle-field, the distance 
by the river is some thirteen miles. From the river 
to the lake the least distance is four miles. This vast 
territory is traversed by lines of horse-cars which 
all meet in Canal Street, the most important business 
thoroughfare of the city, which runs north-east from 
the river, and divides the French from the Amer- 
ican quarter. One taking a horse-car in any part 
of the city will ultimately land, having boxed the 
compass, in Canal Street. But it needs a person of 
vast local erudition to tell in what part of the city, or 
in what section of the home of the frog and craw- 
fish, he will land if he takes a horse-car in Canal 
Street. The river being higher than the city, there 
is of course no drainage into it ; but there is a theory 
that the water in the open gutters does move, and 
that it moves in the direction of the Bayou St. John, 
and of the cypress swamps that drain into Lake Pont- 
chartrain. The stranger who is accustomed to closed 



4:2 South and West. 

sewers, and to get his malaria and typhoid through 
pipes conducted into his house by the most approved 
methods of plumbing, is aghast at this spectacle of 
slime and filth in the streets, and wonders why the 
city is not in perennial epidemic ; but the sun and the 
wind are great scavengers, and the city is not nearly 
so unhealthy as it ought to be with such a city gov- 
ernment as they say it endures. 

It is not necessary to dwell much upon the external 
features of New Orleans, for innumerable descriptions 
and pictures have familiarized the public with them. 
Besides, descriptions can give the stranger little idea 
of the peculiar city. Although all on one level, it is 
a town of contrasts. In no other city of the Unit- 
ed States or of Mexico is the old and romantic pre- 
served in such integrity and brought into such sharp 
contrast to the modern. There are many handsome 
public buildings, churches, club-houses, elegant shops, 
and on the American side a great area of well-paved 
streets solidly built up in business blocks. The Square 
of the original city, included between the river and 
canal. Rampart and Esplanade streets, which was once 
surrounded by a wall, is as closely built, but the 
streets are narrow, the houses generally are smaller, 
and although it swarms with people, and contains the 
cathedral, the old Spanish buildings, Jackson Square, 
the French Market, the French Opera-house, and other 
theatres, the Mint, the Custom-house, the old Ursuline 
convent (now the residence of the archbishop), old 
banks, and scores of houses of historic celebrity, it is 
a city of the past, and specially interesting in its pict- 
uresque decay. Beyond this, eastward and north- 
ward extend interminable streets of small houses, with 



New Orleans.' 43 

now and then a flowery court or a pretty rose garden, 
occupied mainly by people of French and Spanish de- 
scent. The African pervades all parts of the town, 
except the new residence portion of the American 
quarter. This, which occupies the vast area in the 
bend of the river west of the business blocks as far 
as Carrollton, is in character a great village rather 
than a city. Not all its broad avenues and hand- 
some streets are paved (and those that are not are 
in some seasons impassable), its houses are nearly 
all of wood, most of them detached, with plots of 
ground and gardens, and as the quarter is very well 
shaded, the eifect is bright and agreeable. In it are 
man}'- stately residences, occupying a square or half a 
square, and embowered in foliage and flowers. Care 
has been given lately to turf-culture, and one sees here 
thick-set and handsome lawns. The broad Esplanade 
Street, with its elegant old-fashioned houses, and dou- 
ble rows of shade trees, which has long been the rural 
pride of the French quarter, has now rivals in respect- 
ability and style on the American side. 

New Orleans is said to be delightful in the late fall 
months, before the winter rains set in, but I believe it 
looks its best in March and April. This is owing to 
the roses. If the town was not attached to the name 
of the Crescent City, it might very well adopt the 
title of the City of Roses. So kind are climate and 
soil that the magnificent varieties of this queen of 
flowers, Avhich at the North bloom only in hot-houses, 
or with great care are planted out-doors in the heat of 
our summer, thrive here in the open air in prodigal 
abundance and beauty. In April the town is literally 
embowered in them ; they fill door-yards and gardens, 



44 South and West. 

they overrun the porches, they climb the sides of the 
houses, they spread over the trees, they take posses- 
sion of trellises and fences and walls, perfuming the 
air and entrancing the heart with color. In the out- 
lying parks, like that of the Jockey Club, and the 
florists' gardens at Carrollton, there are fields of them, 
acres of the finest sorts waving in the spring wind. 
Alas ! can beauty ever satisfy ? This wonderful spec- 
tacle fills one with I know not what exquisite longing. 
These flowers pervade the town, old women on the 
street corners sit behind banks of them, the florists' 
windows blush with them, friends despatch to each 
other great baskets of them, the favorites at the the- 
atre and the amateur performers stand behind high 
barricades of roses which the good-humored audience 
piles upon the stage, everybody carries roses and 
wears roses, and the houses overflow with them. In 
this passion for flowers you may read a prominent 
trait of the people. For myself I like to see a spot 
on this earth where beauty is enjoyed for itself and 
let to run to waste, but if ever the industrial spirit 
of the French-Italians should prevail along the litto- 
ral of Louisiana and Mississippi, the raising of flow- 
ers for the manufacture of perfumes would become 
a most profitable industry. 

New Orleans is the most cosmopolitan of provincial 
cities. Its comparative isolation has secured the de- 
velopment of provincial traits and manners, has pre- 
served the individuality of the many races that give 
it color, morals, and character, while its close relations 
with France — an afiiliation and sympathy which the 
late war has not altogether broken — and the constant 
influx of Northern men of business and affairs have 



New Orleans. 45 

given it the air of a metropolis. To the Northern 
stranger the aspect and the manners of the city are 
foreign, but if he remains long enough he is sure to 
yield to its fascinations, and become a partisan of it. 
It is not altogether the soft and somewhat enervating 
and occasionally treacherous climate that beguiles 
him, but quite as much the easy terms on which life 
can be lived. There is a human as well as a climatic 
amiability that wins him. No doubt it is better for a 
man to be always braced up, but no doubt also there 
is an attraction in a complaisance that indulges his 
inclinations. 

Socially as well as commercially New Orleans is in 
a transitive state. The change from river to railway 
transportation has made her levees vacant ; the ship- 
ment of cotton by rail and its direct transfer to ocean 
carriage have nearly destroyed a large middle-men 
industry ; a large part of the agricultural tribute of 
the South-west has been diverted; plantations have 
either not recovered from the effects of the war or 
have not adjusted themselves to new productions, and 
the city waits the rather blind developments of the 
new era. The falling off of law business, which I 
should like to attribute to the growth of common- 
sense and good-will is, I fear, rather due to business 
lassitude, for it is observed that men quarrel most 
when they are most actively engaged in acquiring 
each other's property. The business habits of the 
Creoles were conservative and slow ; they do not 
readily accept new ways, and in this transition time 
the American element is taking the lead in all enter- 
prises. The American element itself is toned down 
by the climate and the contagion of the leisurely hab- 



46 South and West. 

its of the Creoles, and loses something of the sharp- 
ness and excitability exhibited by business men in all 
Northern cities, but it is certainly changing the social 
as well as the business aspect of the city. Whether 
these social changes will make New Orleans a more 
agreeable place of residence remains to be seen. 

For the old civilization had many admirable quali- 
ties. With all its love of money and luxury and an 
easy life, it was comparatively simple. It cared less 
for display than the society that is supplanting it. 
Its rule was domesticity. I should say that it had 
the virtues as well as the prejudices and the narrow- 
ness of intense family feeling, and its exclusiveness. 
But when it trusted, it had few reserves, and its cord- 
iality was equal to its naivete. The Creole civiliza- 
tion differed totally from that in any Northern city; 
it looked at life, literature, wit, manners, from alto- 
gether another plane; in order to understand the so- 
ciety of New Orleans one needs to imagine what 
French society would be in a genial climate and in 
the freedom of a new country. Undeniably, until 
recently, the Creoles gave the tone to New Orleans. 
And it was the French culture, the French view of 
life, that was diffused. The young ladies mainly 
were educated in convents and French schools. This 
education had womanly agreeability and matrimony 
in view, and the graces of social life. It differed not 
much from the education of young ladies of the peri- 
od elsewhere, except that it was from the French 
rather than the English side, but this made a world 
of difference. French was a study and a possession, 
not a fashionable accomplishment. The Creole had 
gayety, sentiment, spirit, with a certain climatic Ian- 



New Orleans. 47 

guor, sweetness of disposition, and charm of manner, 
and not seldom winning beauty; she was passionately- 
fond of dancing and of music, and occasionally an 
adept in the latter; and she had candor, and either 
simplicity or the art of it. But with her tendency 
to domesticity and her capacity for friendship, and 
notwithstanding her gay temperament, she was less 
worldly than some of her sisters who were more 
gravely educated after the English manner. There 
was therefore in the old New Orleans life something 
nobler than the spirit of plutocracy. The Creole 
middle-class population had, and has yet, captivating 
naivete, friendliness, cordiality. 

But the Creole influence in New Orleans is wider 
and deeper than this. It has aifected literary. sym- 
pathies and what may be called literary morals. In 
business the Creole is accused of being slow, conserva- 
tive, in regard to improvements obstinate and reaction- 
ary, preferring to nurse a prejudice rather than run 
the risk of removing it by improving himself, and of 
having a conceit that his way of looking at life is bet- 
ter than the Boston way. His literary culture is de- 
rived from France, and not from England or the 
North. And his ideas a good deal affect the attitude 
of New Orleans towards English and contemporary 
literature. The American element of the town was 
for the most part commercial, and little given to lit- 
erary tastes. That also is changing, but I fancy it is 
still true that the most solid culture is with the Cre- 
oles, and it has not been appreciated because it is 
French, and because its point of view for literary 
criticism is quite different from that prevailing else- 
where in America. It brings our American and Eng- 



48 South and West 

lish contemporary authors, for instance, to compari- 
son, not with each other, but with French and other 
Continental writers. And this point of view consid- 
erably affects the New Orleans opinion of Northern 
literature. In this view it wants color, passion; it is 
too self-conscious and prudish, not to say Puritanically 
mock-modest. I do not mean to say that the Creoles 
as a class are a reading people, but the literary stand- 
ards of their scholars and of those among them who 
do cultivate literature deeply are different from those 
at the North. We may call it provincial, or we may 
call it cosmopolitan, but we shall not understand New 
Orleans until we get its point of view of both life 
and letters. 

In making these observations it will occur to the 
reader that they are of necessity superficial, and not 
entitled to be regarded as criticism or judgment. But 
I am impressed with the foreignness of New Orleans 
civilization, and whether its point of view is right or 
wrong, I am very far from wishing it to change. It 
contains a valuable element of variety for the repub- 
lic. We tend everywhere to sameness and monotony. 
New Orleans is entering upon a new era of develop- 
ment, especially in educational life. The Toulane 
University is beginning to make itself felt as a force 
both in polite letters and in industrial education. 
And I sincerely hope that the literary development of 
the city and of the South-west will be in the line of 
its own traditions, and that it will not be a copy of 
New England or of Dutch Manhattan. It can, if it 
is faithful to its own sympathies and temperament, 
make an original and valuable contribution to our lit- 
erary life. 



New Orleans. 4^ 

There is a great temptation to regard New Orleans 
through the romance of its past; and the most inter- 
esting occupation of the idler is to stroll about in the 
French part of the town, search the shelves of French 
and Spanish literature in the second-hand book-shops, 
try to identify the historic sites and the houses that 
are the seats of local romances, and observe the life 
in the narrow streets and alleys that, except for the 
presence of the colored folk, recall the quaint pictu- 
resqueness of many a French provincial town. One 
never tires of wandering in the neighborhood of the 
old cathedral, facing the smart Jackson Square, which 
is flanked by. the respectable Pontalba buildings, and 
supported on either side by the ancient Spanish court- 
house, the most interesting specimens of Spanish ar- 
chitecture this side of Mexico. When the court is in 
session, iron cables are stretched across the street to 
prevent the passage of wagons, and justice is admin- 
istered in silence only broken by the trill of birds in 
the Place d'Armes and in the old flower-garden in 
the rear of the cathedral, and by the mufiled sound 
of footsteps in the flagged passages. The region is 
saturated with romance, and so full of present senti- 
ment and picturesqueness that I can fancy no ground 
more congenial to the artist and the story-teller. To 
enter into any details of it would be to commit one's 
self to a task quite foreign to the purpose of this pa- 
per, and I leave it to the writers who have done and 
are doing so much to make old New Orleans classic. 

Possibly no other city of the United States so 

abounds in stories pathetic and tragic, many of which 

cannot yet be published, growing out of the mingling 

of races, the conflicts of French and Spanish, the pres- 

4 



50 South and West. 

ence of adventurers from the Old World and the 
Spanish Main, and especially out of the relations be- 
tween the whites and the fair women who had in their 
thin veins drops of African blood. The quadroon 
and the octoroon are the staple of hundreds of thrill- 
ing tales. Duels were common incidents of the Cre- 
ole dancing assemblies, and of the cordon bleu balls — 
the deities of which were the quadroon women, '* the 
handsomest race of women in the world," says the 
description, and the most splendid dancers and the 
most exquisitely dressed — the affairs of honor being 
settled by a midnight thrust in a vacant square be- 
hind the cathedral, or adjourned to a more French 
daylight encounter at "The Oaks," or "Les Trois 
Capalins." But this life has all gone. In a stately 
building in this quarter, said by tradition to have been 
the quadroon ball-room, but I believe it was a white 
assembly-room connected with the opera, is now a 
well-ordered school for colored orphans, presided over 
by colored Sisters of Charity. 

It is quite evident that the peculiar prestige of the 
quadroon and the octoroon is a thing of the past. 
Indeed, the result of the war has greatly changed the 
relations of the two races in New Orleans. The col- 
ored people withdraw more and more to themselves. 
Isolation from white influence has good results and 
bad results, the bad being, as one can see, in some 
quarters of the town, a tendency to barbarism, which 
can only be counteracted by free public schools, and 
by a necessity which shall compel them to habits of 
thrift and industry. One needs to be very much an 
optimist, however, to have patience for these develop- 
ments. 



New Orleans. 51 

I believe there is an instinct in both races as^ainst 
mixture of blood, and upon this rests the law of 
Louisiana, which forbids such intermarriages ; the 
time may come when the colored people will be as 
strenuous in insisting upon its execution as the wiiites, 
unless there is a great change in popular feeling, of 
which there is no sign at present ; it is they who will 
see that there is no escape from the equivocal posi- 
tion in which those nearly white in appearance find 
themselves except by a rigid separation of races. 
The danger is of a reversal at any time to the origi- 
nal type, and that is always present to the offspring 
of any one with a drop of African blood in the veins. 
The pathos of this situation is infinite, and it cannot 
be lessened by saying that the prejudice about color 
is unreasonable ; it exists. Often the African strain 
is so attenuated that the possessor of it would pass to 
the ordinary observer for Spanish or French ; and I 
suppose that many so-called Creole peculiarities of 
speech and manner are traceable to this strain. An 
incident in point may not be uninteresting. 

I once lodged in the old French quarter in a house 
kept by two maiden sisters, only one of whom spoke 
English at all. They were refined, and had the air of 
decayed gentlewomen. The one who spoke English 
had the vivacity and agreeability of a Paris landlady, 
without the latter's invariable hardness and sharpness. 
I thought I had found in her pretty mode of speech 
the real Creole dialect of her class. " You are French," 
I said, when I engaged my room. 

" No," she said, " no, m'sieu, I am an American ; w^e 
are of the United States," with the air of informing a 
stranger that New Orleans was now annexed. 



52 South and West. 

"Yes," I replied, "but you are of French de- 
scent ?" 

" Oh, and a little Spanish." 

" Can you tell me, madame," I asked, one Sunday 
morning, "the way to Trinity Church?" 

" I cannot tell, m'sieu ; it is somewhere the other 
side ; I do not know the other side." 

"But have you never been the other side of Canal 
Street ?" 

" Oh yes, I Avent once, to make a visit on a friend 
on Kew- Year's." 

I explained that it was far uptown, and a Protes- 
tant church. 

"M'sieu, is he Cat'olic?" 

" Oh no ; I am a Protestant." 

" Well, me, I am Cat'olic ; but Protestan' o' Cat'o- 
lic, it is 'mos' ze same." 

This was purely the instinct of politeness, and that 
my feelings might not be wounded, for she was a 
good Catholic, and did not believe at all that it was 
" 'mos' ze same." 

It was Exposition year, and then April, and madame 
had never been to the Exposition. I urged her to go, 
and one day, after great preparation for a journey to 
the other side, she made the expedition, and returned 
enchanted with all she had seen, especially with the 
Mexican band. A new world was opened to her, and 
she resolved to go again. The morning of Louisiana 
Day she rapped at my door and informed me that she 
was going to the fair. "And" — she j^aused at the 
door-way, her eyes sparkling with her new project — 
" you know what I goin' do ?" 

"No." 



New Orleans. 53 

" I goin' get one big bouquet, and give to the lead- 
er of the orchestre." 

*' You know hira, the leader ?" 

" IsTo, not yet." 

I did not know then how poor she was, and how 
much sacrifice this would be to her, this gratification 
of a sentiment. 

The next year, in the same month, I asked for her 
at the lodging. She was not there. " You did not 
know," said the woman then in possession — "good 
God ! her sister died four days ago, from want of 
food, and madame has gone away back of town, no- 
body knows where. They told nobody, they were so 
proud; none of their friends knew, or they would have 
helped. They had no lodgers, and could not keep 
this place, and took another oj^posite; but they were 
unlucky, and the sheriff came." I said that I was 
very sorry that I had not known ; she might have 
been helped. " No," she rej)lied, with considerable 
spirit; "she would have accepted nothing; she would 
starve rather. So would I." The woman referred 
me to some well-known Creole families who knew 
madame, but I was unable to find her hiding-place. 
I asked who madame was. " Oh, she was a very nice 
woman, very respectable. Her father was Spanish, 
her mother was an octoroon." 

One does not need to go into the past of New Or- 
leans for the picturesque; the streets have their pe- 
culiar physiognomy, and "character" such as the 
artists delight to depict is the result of the extraordi- 
nary mixture of races and the habit of out-door life. 
The long summer, from April to November, with a 
heat continuous, though rarely so excessive as it oc- 



64 South and West. 

casionally is In higher latitudes, determines the mode 
of life and the structure of the houses, and gives a 
leisurely and amiable tone to the aspect of people and 
streets which exists in few other American cities. 
The French quarter is out of repair, and has the air 
of being for rent: but in fact there is comparatively 
little change in occupancy, Creole families being re- 
markably adhesive to localities. The stranger who 
sees all over the French and the business parts of the 
town the immense number of lodging-houses — some 
of them the most stately old mansions — let largely 
by colored landladies, is likely to underestimate the 
home life of this city. ISTew Orleans soil is so wet 
that the city is without cellars for storage, and its 
court-yards and odd corners become catch-alls of bro- 
ken furniture and other lumber. The solid window- 
shutters, useful in the glare of the long summer, give 
a blank appearance to the streets. This is relieved, 
however, by the queer little Spanish houses, and by 
the endless variety of galleries and balconies. In one 
part of the town the iron- work of the balconies is cast, 
and uninteresting in its set patterns; in French-town 
much of it is hand-made, exquisite in design, and gives 
to a street vista a delicate lace-work appearance. I 
do not know any foreign town which has on view so 
much exquisite wrought-iron work as the old part of 
New Orleans. Besides the balconies, there are re- 
cessed galleries, old dormer-windows, fantastic little 
nooks and corners, tricked out with flower-pots and 
vines. 

The glimpses of street life are always entertaining, 
because unconscious, while full of character. It may 
be a Creole court-yard, the walls draped with vines. 



New Orleans. 55 

flowers blooming in hap-hazard disarray, and a group 
of pretty girls sewing and chatting, and stabbing the 
passer-by with a charmed glance. It may be a cotton 
team in the street, the mules, the rollicking driver, the 
creaking cart. It may be a single figure, or a group 
in the market or on the levee — a slender yellow girl 
sweeping up the grains of rice, a colored gleaner re- 
calling Ruth; an ancient darky asleep, with mouth 
open, in his tipped-up two- wheeled cart, waiting for a 
job; the "solid South," in the shape of an immense 
*' aunty " under a red umbrella, standing and contem- 
plating the river; the broad-faced women in gay ban- 
dannas behind their cake - stands ; a group of levee 
hands about a rickety table, taking their noonday 
meal of pork and greens; the blind-man, capable of 
sitting more patiently than an American Congress- 
man, with a dog trained to hold his basket for the 
pennies of the charitable; the black stalwart vender 
of tin and iron utensils, who totes in a basket, and 
piled on his head, and strung on his back, a weight of 
over two hundred and fifty pounds; and negro women 
who walk erect with baskets of clothes or enormous 
bundles balanced on their heads, smiling and " jaw- 
ing," unconscious of their burdens. These are the fa- 
miliar figures of a street life as varied and picturesque 
as the artist can desire. 

New Orleans amuses itself in the winter with very 
good theatres, and until recently has sustained an ex- 
cellent French opera. It has all the year round plen- 
ty of cafes chantantSy gilded saloons, and gambling- 
houses, and more than enough of the resorts upon 
which the police are supposed to keep one blind eye. 
" Back of town," towards Lake Pontchartrain, there is 



56 South and West 

much that is picturesque and blooming, especially in 
the spring of the year — the charming gardens of the 
Jockey Club, the City Park, the old duelling-ground 
with its superb oaks, and the Bayou St. John with its 
idling fishing-boats, and the colored houses and plan- 
tations along the banks — a piece of Holland wanting 
the Dutch windmills. On a breezy day one may go 
far for a prettier sight than the river-bank and es- 
planade at Carrollton, where the mighty coffee-colored 
flood swirls by, where the vast steamers struggle and 
cough against the stream, or swiftly go with it round 
the bend, leaving their trail of smoke, and the delicate 
line of foliage against the sky on the far opposite 
shore completes the outline of an exquisite landscape. 
Suburban resorts much patronized, and reached by 
frequent trains, are the old Spanish Fort and the West 
End of Lake Pontchartrain. The way lies through 
cypress swamj) and palmetto thickets, brilliant at cer- 
tain seasons with J^e^<?'-f7e-Z^5. At each of these resorts 
are restaurants, dancing-halls, promenade-galleries, all 
on a large scale; boat-houses, and semi-troj^ical gardens 
very prettily laid out in walks and labyrinths, and 
adorned with trees and flowers. Even in the heat of 
summer at night the lake is sure to offer a breeze, and 
with waltz music and moonlight and ices and tinkling 
glasses with straws in them and love's young dream, 
even the enmiye globe-trotter declares that it is not 
half bad. 

The city, indeed, offers opportunity for charming 
excursions in all directions. Parties are constantly 
made u]3 to visit the river plantations, to sail up and 
down the stream, or to take an outing across the lake, 
or to the many lovely places along the coast. In the 



New Orleans. 57 

winter, excursions are made to these places, and in 
summer the well-to-do take the sea-air in cottages, at 
such places as Mandeville across the lake, or at such 
resorts on the Mississippi as Pass Christian. 

I crossed the lake one spring day to the pretty 
town of Mandeville, and then sailed up the Tche- 
functa River to Covington. The winding Tchefunc- 
ta is in character like some of the narrow Florida 
streams, has the same luxuriant overhanging foliage, 
and as many shy lounging alligators to the mile, and 
is prettier by reason of occasional open glades and 
large moss-draped live-oaks and China-trees. From 
the steamer landing in the woods we drove three 
miles through a lovely open pine forest to the town. 
Covington is one of the oldest settlements in the 
State, is the centre of considerable historic interest, 
and the origin of several historic families. The land 
is elevated a good deal above the coast-level, and is 
consequently dry. The town has a few roomy old- 
time houses, a mineral spring, some pleasing scenery 
along the river that winds through it, and not much 
else. But it is in the midst of pine woods, it is shel- 
tered from all " northers," it has the soft air, but not 
the dampness, of the Gulf, and is exceedingly salubri- 
ous in all the winter months, to say nothing of the 
summer. It has lately come into local repute as a 
health resort, although it lacks sufficient accommoda- 
tions for the entertainment of many strangers. I was 
told by some New Orleans physicians that they re- 
garded it as almost a specific for pulmonary diseases, 
and instances were given of persons in what was sup- 
posed to be advanced stages of lung and bronchial 
troubles who had been apparently cured by a few 



58 South and ^est. 

months' residence there ; and invalids are, I believe, 
greatly benefited by its healing, soft, and piny atmos- 
phere. 

I have no doubt, from what I hear and my limited 
observation, that all this coast about New Orleans 
would be a favorite winter resort if it had hotels as 
good as, for instance, that at Pass Christian. The re- 
gion has many attractions for the idler and the inva- 
lid. It is, in the first place, interesting; it has a good 
deal of variety of scenery and of historical interest; 
there is excellent fishing and shooting; and if the vis- 
itor tires of the monotony of the country, he can by a 
short ride on cars or a steamer transfer himself for a 
day or a Aveek to a large and most hospitable city, to 
society, the club, the opera, balls, parties, and every 
variety of life that his taste craves. The disadvan- 
tage of many Southern places to which our Northern 
regions force us is that they are uninteresting, stupid, 
and monotonous, if not malarious. It seems a long 
way from New York to New Orleans, but I do not 
doubt that the region around the city would become 
immediately a great winter resort if money and en- 
terprise were enlisted to make it so. 

New Orleans has never been called a "strait-laced" 
city; its Sunday is still of the Continental type; but 
it seems to me free from the socialistic agnosticism 
which flaunts itself more or less in Cincinnati, St. 
Louis, and Chicago; the tone of leading Presbyterian 
churches is distinctly Calvinistic, one perceives com- 
paratively little of religious speculation and doubt, 
and so far as I could see there is harmony and entire 
social good feeling between the Catholic and Protes- 
tant communions. Protestant ladies assist at Catho- 



New Orleans. 59 

lie fairs, and the compliment is returned by the soci- 
ety ladies of the Catholic faith when a Protestant 
good cause is to be furthered by a bazaar or a " pink 
tea." Denominational lines seem to have little to do 
with social affiliations. There may be friction in the 
management of the great public charities, but on the 
surface there is toleration and united good-will. The 
Catholic faith long had the prestige of wealth, family, 
and power, and the education of the daughters of 
Protestant houses in convent schools tended to allay 
prejudice. Notwithstanding the reputation New Or- 
leans has for gayety and even frivolity — and no one 
can deny the fast and furious living of ante-bellum 
days — it possesses at bottom an old-fashioned relig- 
ious simplicity. If any one thinks that "faith" has 
died out of modern life, let him visit the mortuary 
chapel of St. Roch. In a distant part of the town, 
beyond the street of the Elysian Fields, and on Wash- 
ington Avenue, in a district very sparsely built up, is 
the Campo Santo of the Catholic Church of the Holy 
Trinity. In this foreign -looking cemetery is the 
pretty little Gothic Chapel of St. Roch, having a back- 
ground of common and swampy land. It is a brown 
stuccoed edifice, wholly open in front, and was a year 
or two ago covered with beautiful ivy. The small 
interior is paved in white marble, the windows are 
stained glass, the side walls are composed of tiers of 
vaults, where are buried the members of certain soci- 
eties, and the spaces in the wall and in the altar area 
are thickly covered with votive offerings, in wax and 
in naive painting — contributed by those who have 
been healed by the intercession of the saints. Over 
the altar is the shrine of St. Roch — a cavalier, staff in 



60 South and West. 

hand, with his dog by his side, the faithful animal 
which accompanied this eighth-century philanthropist 
in his visitations to the plague-stricken people of Mu- 
nich. Within the altar rail are rows of lighted can- 
dles, tended and renewed by the attendant, placed 
there by penitents or by seekers after the favor of the 
saint. On the wooden benches, kneeling, are ladies, 
servants, colored women, in silent prayer. One ap- 
proaches the lighted, picturesque shrine through the 
formal rows of tombs, and comes there into an atmos- 
phere of peace and faith. It is believed that miracles 
are daily wrought liere, and one notices in all the 
gardeners, keepers, and attendants of the place the 
accent and demeanor of simple faith. On the wall 
hangs this inscription: 

" great St. Roch, deliver us, we beseech thee, from the scourges of 
God. Through thy intercessions preserve our bodies from contagious 
diseases, and our souls from the contagion of sin. Obtain for us sa- 
lubrious air; but, above all, purity of heart. Assist us to make good 
use of health, to bear suffering with patience, and after thy example 
to live in the practice of penitence and charity, that we may one day 
enjoy the happiness which thou hast merited by thy virtues. 

" St. Roch, pray for us. 

" St. Roch, pray for us. 

" St. Roch, pray for us." 

There is testimony that many people, even Protes- 
tants, and men, have had wounds cured and been 
healed of diseases by prayer in this chapel. To this 
distant shrine come ladies from all parts of the city 
to make the " novena " — the prayer of nine days, with 
the offer of the burning taper — and here daily resort 
hundreds to intercede for themselves or their friends. 
It is believed by the damsels of this district that if 



New Orleans.. 61 

they offer prayer daily in this chapel they will have a 
husband within the year, and one may see kneeling 
here every evening these trustful devotees to the wel- 
fare of the human race. I asked the colored woman 
who sold medals and leaflets and renewed the candles 
if she personally knew any persons who had been mi- 
raculously cured by prayer, or novena, in St. Roch. 
" Plenty, sir, plenty." And she related many in- 
stances, which were confirmed by votive offerings on 
the walls. " Why," said she, " there was a friend of 
mine who wanted a place, and could hear of none, 
who made a novena here, and right away got a place, 
a good place, and " (conscious that she was making an 
astonishing statement about a New Orleans servant) 
" she kept it a whole year !" 

" But one must come in the right spirit," I said. 

'^Ah, indeed. It needs to believe. You can't fool 
God !" 

One might make various studies of New Orleans : 
its commercial life; its methods, more or less anti- 
quated, of doing business, and the leisure for talk that 
enters into it; its admirable charities and its mediaeval 
prisons; its romantic French and Spanish history, still 
lingering in the old houses, and traits of family and 
street life ; the city politics, which nobody can ex- 
plain, and no other city need covet; its sanitary con- 
dition, which needs an intelligent despot with plenty 
of money and an ingenuity that can make water run 
uphill ; its colored population — about a fourth of the 
city — with its distinct social grades, its superstition, 
nonchalant good-humor, turn for idling and basking 
in the sun, slowly awaking to a sense of thrift, chas- 
tity, truth-speaking, with many excellent order-loving, 



62 South and West 

patriotic men and women, but a mass that needs moral 
training quite as much as the fepelling-book before it 
can contribute to the vigor and prosperity of the city ; 
its schools and recent libraries, and the developing 
literary and art taste which will sustain book-shops 
and picture-galleries; its cuisine, peculiar in its min- 
gling of French and African skill, and determined 
largely by a market unexcelled in the quality of fish, 
game, and fruit — the fig alone would go far to recon- 
cile one to four or five months of hot nights; the cli- 
matic influence in assimilatinor races meeting^ there 
from every region of the earth. 

But Avhatever way we regard New Orleans^ it is in 
its aspect, social tone, and character sui generis ^ its 
civilization differs widely from that of any other, and 
it remains one of the most interesting places in the 
republic. Of course, social life in these days is much 
the same in all great cities in its observances, but that 
of New Orleans is markedly cordial, ingenuous, warm- 
hearted. I do not imagine that it could tolerate, as 
Boston does, absolute freedom of local opinion on all 
subjects, and undoubtedly it is sensitive to criticism; 
but I believe that it is literally true, as one of its citi- 
zens said, that it is still more sensitive to kindness. 

The metropolis of the South-west has geographical 
reasons for a great future. Louisiana is rich in allu- 
vial soil, the capability of which has not yet been test- 
ed, except in some localities, by skilful agriculture. 
But the prosperity of the city depends much upon 
local conditions. Science and energy can solve the 
problem of drainage, can convert all the territory be- 
tween the city and Lake Pontchartrain into a verita- 
ble garden, surpassing in fertility the flat environs of 



New Orleans. 63 

the city of Mexico. And the steady development of 
common-school education, together with technical and 
industrial schools, will create a skill which will make 
New Orleans the industrial and manufacturmg centre 
of that resrion. 



ly. 

A VOUDOO DANCE. 

There was nothing mysterious about it. The 
ceremony took place in broad day, at noon in the 
upper chambers of a small frame house in a street 
just beyond Congo Square and the old Parish prison 
in New Orleans. It was an incantation rather than a 
dance — a curious minMincr of African Voudoo rites 
with modern " spiritualism " and faith-cure. 

The explanation of Voudooism (or Vaudouism) 
would require a chapter by itself. It is sufficient to 
say for the purpose of this paper that the barbaric 
rites of Youdooism originated with the Congo and 
Guinea negroes, were brought to San Domingo, and 
thence to Louisiana. In Ilayti the sect is in full vig- 
or, and its midnight orgies have reverted more and 
more to the barbaric original in the last twenty-five 
years. The wild dance and incantations are accom- 
panied by sacrifice of animals and occasionally of in- 
fants, and with cannibalism, and scenes of most inde- 
cent license. In its origin it is serpent worship. The 
Youdoo signifies a being all-powerful on the earth, 
who is, or is represented by, a harmless species of 
serpent (coukuvre), and in this belief the sect per- 
form rites in which the serpent is propitiated. In 
common parlance, the chief actor is called the Youdoo 
— if a man, the Youdoo King ; if a woman, the You- 
doo Queen. Some years ago Congo Square was the 



A Voudoo Dance. 65 

scene of the weird midnight rites of this sect, as nn- 
restrained and barbarous as ever took place in the 
Congo country. All these semi-public performances 
have been suppressed, and all private assemblies for 
this worship are illegal, and broken up by the police 
when discovered. It is said in ISTew Orleans that 
Voudooisra is a thing of the past. But the supersti- 
tion remains, and I believe that very few of the col- 
ored people in New Orleans are free from it — that is, 
free from it as a superstition. Those who repudiate 
it, have nothing to do with it, and regard it as only 
evil, still ascribe power to the Voudoo, to some ugly 
old woman or man, who is popularly believed to have 
occult power (as the Italians believe in the " evil- 
eye "), can cast a charm and put the victims under a 
spell, or by incantations relieve them from it. The 
power of the Voudoo is still feared by many who are 
too intelligent to believe in it intellectually. That 
persons are still Voudooed, probably few doubt ; and 
that people are injured by charms secretly placed in 
their beds, or are bewitched in various ways, is common 
belief — more common than the Saxon notion that it 
is ill-luck to see the new moon over the left shoulder. 

Although very few white people in New Orleans 
have ever seen the performance I shall try to de- 
scribe, and it is said that the police would break it 
up if they knew of it, it takes place every Wednesday 
at noon at the house where I saw it ; and there are 
three or four other places in the city where the rites 
are, celebrated sometimes at night. Our admission 
was procured through a friend who had, I suppose, 
vouched for our good intentions. 

We were received in the living-rooms of the house 
5 



66 South and West 

on the ground-lloor by the " doctor," a good-lookmg 
mulatto of middle age, clad in a white shirt with gold 
studs, linen pantaloons, and list slippers. He had the 
simple-minded shrewd look of a " healing medium." 
The interior was neat, though iij some confusion ; 
among the rude attempts at art on the walls was the 
worst chromo print of General Grant that was prob- 
ably ever made. There were several negroes about 
the door, many in the rooms and in the backyard, 
and all had an air of expectation and mild excitement. 
After we had satisfied the scruples of the doctor, and 
signed our names in his register, we were invited to 
ascend by a narrow, crooked stair- way in the rear. 
Thi^ led to a small landing where a dozen people 
might stand, and from this a door opened into a 
chamber perhaps fifteen feet by ten, where the rites 
were to take place ; beyond this was a small bedroom. 
Around the sides of these rooms were benches and 
chairs, and the close quarters were already well filled. 

The assembly was perfectly orderly, but a motley 
one, and the women largely outnumbered the men. 
There were coal-black negroes, porters, and stevedores, 
fat cooks, slender chamber-maids, all shades of com- 
plexion, yellow girls and comely quadroons, most of 
them in common servant attire, but some neatly 
dressed. And among them were, to my surprise, sev- 
eral white people. 

On one side of the middle room where we sat was 
constructed a sort of buffet or bureau, used as an altar. 
On it stood an image of the Virgin Mary in painted 
plaster, about two feet high, flanked by lighted can- 
dles and a couple of cruets, with some other small 
objects. On a shelf below were two other candles, 



A Voudoo Dance. 67 

and on this slielf and tlie floor in front were various 
offerings to bo used in the rites — plates of apples, 
grapes, bananas, oranges ; dishes of sugar, of sugar- 
plums ; a dish of powdered orris root, packages of 
candles, bottles of brandy and of water. Two other 
lighted candles stood on the iloor, and in front an 
earthen bowl. The clear space in front for the 
dancer was not more than four or five feet square. 

Some time was consumed in preparations, or in 
waiting for the worshippers to assemble. From con- 
versation with those near me, I found that the doctor 
had a reputation for healing the diseased by virtue of 
his incantations, of removing "spells," of finding lost 
articles, of ministering to the troubles of lovers, and, 
in short, of doing very much what clairvoyants and 
healing mediums claim to do in what are called civil- 
ized communities. 13ut failing to get a very intelli- 
gent account of the expected performance from the 
negro woman next me, I moved to the side of the al- 
tar and took a chair next a girl of perhaps twenty 
years old, whose complexion and features gave evi- 
dence that she was white. Still, finding her in that 
company, and there as a participant in the Voudoo 
rites, I concluded that I must be mistaken, and that 
she must have colored blood in her veins. Assuming 
the privilege of an inquirer, I asked her questions 
about the coming performance, and in doing so car- 
ried the impression that she was kin to the colored 
race. But I was soon convinced, from her manner 
and her replies, that she was pure white. She was a 
pretty, modest girl, very reticent, well-bred, polite, 
and civil. None of the colored people seemed to 
know who she was, but she said she had been there 



68 South and West. 

before. She told me, in course of the conversation, 
the name of the street where she lived (in the Amer- 
ican part of the town), the private school at which 
she had been educated (one of tlie best in the city), 
and that slie and her parents were Episcopalians. 
Whatever her trouble was, mental or physical, slie 
Avas evidently infatuated with the notion that this 
Voudoo doctor could conjure it away, and said that 
she thought he liad already been of service to her. 
She did not communicate her difficulties to him or 
speak to him, but she evidently had faith that he 
could discern what every one present needed, and 
minister to them. When I asked lier if, with her 
education, she did not think that more good would 
come to her by confiding in known friends or in regu- 
lar practitioners, she wearily said that she did not 
know. After the performance began, her intense in- 
terest in it, and the light in her eyes, were evidence of 
the deep hold the superstition had upon her nature. 
In coming to this place she had gone a step beyond 
the young ladies of her class who make a novena at 
St. Koch. 

While we still waited, the doctor and two other 
colored men called me into the next chamber, and 
wanted to be assured that it was my own name I had 
written on the register, and that I had no unfriendly 
intentions in being present. Their doubts at rest, 
all was ready. 

The doctor squatted on one side of the altar, and 
his wife, a stout woman of darker hue, on the other. 

''■ Comnicnpofis,^^ said the woman, in a low voice. All 
the colored people spoke French, and French only, to 
each other and in the ceromonv. 



A Voudoo Dance. 69 

The doctor nodded, bent over, and gave three sharp 
raps on the floor with a bit of wood. (This is the 
usual opening of Voudoo rites.) All the others rap- 
ped three times on the floor with their knuckles. Any 
one coming in to join the circle afterwards, stooped 
and rapped three tinies. After a moment's silence, 
all kneeled and repeated together in French the 
Apostles' Creed, and still on their knees, they said two 
prayers to the Virgin Mary. 

The colored woman at the side of the altar began a 
chant in a low, melodious voice. It was the weird 
and stranc^e " Danse Calinda." A tall neg-ress, with 
a bright, good-natured face, entered the circle with 
the air of a chief performer, knelt, rapped the floor, 
laid an offering of candles before the altar, with a 
small bottle of brandy, seated herself beside the sing- 
er, and took up in a strong, sweet voice the bizarre 
rhythm of the song. Nearly all those who came in 
had laid some little offering before the altar. The 
chant grew, the single line was enunciated in stronger 
pulsations, and other voices joined in the wild refrain, 

" Danse Calinda, boudoum, boudourn j 
Danso Calinda, boudoum, boudoum !" 

bodies swayed, the hands kept time in soft patpatting, 
and the feet in muflled accentuation. The Voudoo 
arose, removed his slippers, seized a bottle of brandy, 
dashed some of the liquid on the floor on each side of 
the brown bowl as a libation, threw back his head and 
took a long pull at the bottle, and then began in the 
open space a slow measured dance, a rhythmical 
shuffle, wdth more movement of the hips than of the 
feet, backward and forward, round and round, but ac- 



70 South and West. 

celerating his movement as the time of the song quick- 
ened and the excitement rose in the room. The sing- 
ing became wihler and more impassioned, a strange 
minor strain, full of savage pathos and longing, that 
made it almost impossible for the spectator not to 
join in the swing of its influence, while the dancer 
wrought himself up into the wild passion of a Cairene 
dervish. Without a moment ceasing his rhythmical 
steps and his extravagant gesticulation, he poured 
liquid into the basin, and dashing in brandy, ignited 
the fluid with a match. The liquid flamed up before 
the altar. lie seized then a bunch of candles, plunged 
them into the bowl, held them up all flaming with the 
burning brandy, and, keeping his step to the madden- 
ing " Calinda," distributed them lighted to the dev- 
otees. In the same way he snatched up dishes of 
apples, grapes, bananas, oranges, deluged them with 
burning brandy, and tossed them about the room to 
the eager and excited crowd. His hands were aflame, 
his clothes seemed to be on fire ; he held the burning 
dishes close to his breast, apparently inhaling the 
flame, closing his eyes and swaying his head back- 
"Nvard and forward in an ecstasy, the hips advancing 
and receding, the feet still shuffling to the barbaric 
measure. 

Every moment his own excitement and that of the 
audience increased. The floor was covered with the 
debris of the sacrifice — broken candy, crushed sugar- 
plums, scattered graj)es — and all more or less in flame. 
The wild dancer was dancing in fire ! In the height 
of his frenzy he grasped a large plate filled with 
lump -sugar. That was set on fire. He held the 
burning mass to his breast, he swung it round, and 



A Voudoo Dance. ^ 

finally, with his hand extended under the bottom of 
the plate (the plate only adhering to his hand by the 
rapidity of his circular motion), he spun around like 
a dancing dervish, his eyes shut, the perspiration pour- 
ing in streams from his face, in a frenzy. The flam- 
ing sugar scattered about the floor, and the devotees 
scrambled for it. In intervals of the dance, tliough 
the singing went on, the various offerings which had 
been conjured were passed around — bits of sugar and 
fruit and orris powder. That which fell to my share 
I gave to the young girl next me, whose eyes were 
blazing with excitement, though she had remained 
perfectly tranquil, and joined neither by voice or 
hands or feet in the excitement. She put the con- 
jured sugar and fruit in her pocket, and seemed grate- 
ful to me for relinquishing it to her. 

Before this point had been reached the chant had 
been changed for the wild canga, more rapid in move- 
ment than the chanson africaine : 

"Eh! ell! Bomba, hen! hen I 
Canga bafio te 
Canga moune d6 le 
Canga do ki la 
Canga li." 

At intervals during the performance, when the 
charm had begun to work, tlie believers came for- 
ward into the open space, and knelt for " treatment" 
The singing, the dance, the wild incantation, went on 
uninterruptedly; but amid all his antics the dancer had 
an eye to business. The first group that knelt were 
four stalwart men, three of them white laborers. All 
of them, I presume, had some disease which they had 
faith the incantation would drive away. Each held a 



72 South and West. 

lighted candle in eacli hand. The doctor successively 
extinguished each candle by putting it in his mouth, 
and performed a number of antics of a saltatory sort. 
During his dancing and whirling he frequently filled 
his mouth with liquid, and discharged it in spray, ex- 
actly as a Chinese laundryman sprinkles his clothes, 
into the faces and on the heads of any man or w^omau 
wuthin reach. Those so treated considered them- 
selves specially favored. Having extinguished the 
candles of the suppliants, he scooped the liquid from 
the bowl, flaming or not as it might be, and with his 
hands vigorously scrubbed their faces and heads, as 
if he were shampooing them. While the victim was 
still sputtering and choking he seized him by the 
right hand, lifted him up, spun him round half a 
dozen times, and then sent him whirling. 

This w^as substantially the treatment that all re- 
ceived who knelt in the circle, though sometimes it 
was more violent. Some of them were slapped smart- 
ly upon the back and the breast, and much knocked 
about. Occasionally a w^oman was whirled till she 
was dizzy, and perhaj^s sw^ung about in his arms as if 
she had been a bundle of clothes. They all took it 
meekly and gratefully. One little girl of tw^elve, 
who had rickets, was banged about till it seemed as 
if every bone in her body w'ould be broken. But the 
doctor had discrimination, even in his wildest moods. 
Some of the women were gently whirled, and the 
conjurer forbore either to spray them from his mouth 
or to shampoo them. 

Nearly all those present knelt, and Avere whirled 
and shaken, and those who did not take this " cure " I 
suppose got the benefit of the incantation by carrying 



A Voiuioo Dance. 78 

away some of the consecrated offerings. Occasion- 
ally a woman in the whirl would whisper something 
in the doctor's ear, and receive from him douhtless 
the counsel she needed. l>ut generally the doctor 
made no inquiries of his i)atients, and they said noth- 
ing to him. 

While the wild chanting, the rhythmic movement 
of hands and feet, the barbarous dance, and the fiery 
incantations were at their height, it was difficult to 
believe that we were in a civilized city of an enlight- 
ened republic. Nothing indecent occurred in word 
or gesture, but it was so wild and bizarre that one 
might easily imagine he was in Africa or in hell. 

As I said, nearly all the participants were colored 
people; but in the height of the frenzy one white 
woman knelt and was sprayed and whirled with the 
others. She was a respectable married woman from 
the other side of Canal Street. I waited with some 
anxiety to see what my modest little neigld)or would 
do. She had told me that she should look on and 
take no part. I ho])ed that the senseless antics, the 
mummery, the rough treatment, would disgust her. 
Towards the close of the seance, when the s})ells were 
all woven and the flames had subsided, the tall, good- 
natured negress motioned to me that it was my turn 
to advance into the circle and kneel. I excused my- 
self. But the young girl w\as unable to resist longer. 
She went forward and knelt, with a candle in her 
hand. The conjurer was either touched by her youth 
and i-ace, or he had spent his force, lie gently lifted 
her by one hand, and gave her one turn around, and 
she came back to her seat. 

The singing ceased. The doctor's Avife passed 



74 South and West. 

round the hat for contributions, and the ceremony, 
which had lasted nearly an hour and a half, was 
over. The doctor retired exhausted with the violent 
exertions. As for the patients, I trust they were well 
cured of rheumatism, of fever, or whatever ill they 
had, and that the young ladies have either got hus- 
bands to their minds or have escaped faithless lovers. 
In the breaking up I had no opportunity to speak fur- 
ther to the interesting young white neophyte; but as 
I saw her resuming her hat and cloak in the adjoin- 
ing room there was a strange excitement in her face, 
and in her eyes a light of triumph and faith. We 
came out by the back way, and through an alley 
made our escape into the sunny street and the air of 
the nineteenth century. 



THE ACADIAN LAND. 

If one crosses the river from New Orleans to Al- 
giers, and takes Morgan's Louisiana and Texas Rail- 
way (now a part of the Southern Pacific line), he will 
go west, with a clip at first southerly, and will pass 
through a region little attractive except to water-fowl, 
snakes, and alligators, by an occasional rice plantation, 
an abandoned indigo field, an interminable stretch of 
cypress swamps, thickets of Spanish -bayonets, black 
waters, rank and rampant vegetation, vines, and w\ater- 
plants ; by-and-by firmer arable land, and cane plan- 
tations, many of them forsaken and become thickets 
of undergrowth, owing to frequent inundations and 
the low price of sugar. 

At a distance of eighty miles Morgan City is reach- 
ed, and the broad Atchafalaya Bayou is crossed. 
Hence is steamboat communication with New Orleans 
and Vera Cruz. The Atchafalaya Bayou has its ori- 
gin near the mouth of the Red River, and diverting 
from the Mississippi most of that great stream, it 
makes its tortuous way to the Gulf, frequently ex- 
panding into the proportions of a lake, and giving this 
region a great deal more water than it needs. The 
Bayou Teche, which is, in fact, a lazy river, wanders 
down from the rolling country of Washington and 
Opelousas, with a great deal of uncertainty of pur- 
pose, but mainly south-easterl}^, and parallel with the 



7^ South iViJ West. 

Atchatalayn, and joins tlio lattor at ]\loriran City. 
Stoaiuors of good si/.o iiavi^ato it as far as Now Ibo- 
ria, Bomo forty to fifty miles, and llio railway follows 
it to tho lattor ]>laoo, within sight of its i'ringo o( livo- 
oaks and oot ton-woods. 'Tho region south and west 
of tho Hay on Tooho, a vast plain out by innuniorablo 
small bayous and streams, whieh have mostly a eon- 
neetion with the bay of Cote lilanehe and ^"ernnlion 
Bay, is the home of the Xova Scotia Aeadians. 

The Aeadians in IToo made a good exehange, little 
as they thought so at the time, o( bleak >iova Seotia 
for these sunny, genial, and fertile lands, riiey eamo 
into a land and a climate suited to their idii^syncra- 
sies, and whicli have enabled them to preserve their 
primitive traits. In a comparative isolation from the 
disturbing currents o( modern life, thcy have i>re- 
served the habits and customs of the eighteenth I'cn- 
tury. The immigrants spread themselves abroad 
among tlu>se bayous, made their homes wiile ajKirt, 
and the traveller will nowhen^ tind — at least 1 did not 
— large and compact con\m unities oi' them, unalloyed 
with the American and other elements. Indeed, I im- 
agine that they are losing, in the general settlement 
of the country, their conspicuonsness. They still give 
the tone, however, to considerable districts, as in the 
village and neighborhood of Abbeville. Some ]>laccs, 
like the old town of St. ^^fartinsvillc, on the Teche, 
onco the social capital oi' the region, and entitled, for 
its wealth anil gayety, tlie IVtit Paris, had a largo 
element of French who were not Aeadians. 

Tho Teche from ^lorgan City to >sew Iberia is a 
dee]\ slow, and winding stream, flowing through a tlat 
region of sugar j^lantations. li is very picturesque 



The Acadian Land. 77 

by roasou of its tortuoiisiioss aiul tho groat spivatlinjjj 
Hvo-oak tivos, moss- (lra|HvK llKit lianj.v t^vor it. A 
voyai^v o\\ it is oiio of tho most nMuanti*.' ontorlain- 
nuMits (>1Voi\hI to tho travoUor, Tho soonory is |>i>aoo- 
fiil, and i^xi'oodinu'ly protty. Thiiv aro low ooiispiou- 
ous plantations \vitli mansions and sni;ar-staoks t>l' any 
protonsions, but tho panorama from tho dook (»!' I ho 
stoamor is always ploasint^. 'Plioro is an air of h'isuro 
and "at'tiMMUHMi " ahout tho i>\podition, whioh ishi^ight- 
onod i>v tho idlo oaso o'i tho inhabitants K>uns;in^- at 
tlio vudo wharvos and hindim;--phioos. and tlio pationoo 
of tho oolorod tishors. boys in soant rainiont and woni- 
on in sun-bonnots, soatod on tho banks. Typioal t>f 
this univorsal oontontmont is tiio anoiont ooU>rotl n\an 
strotoliod on a j^lank oloso [o tho stoamor's boih-r, ob- 
livious of tho boat, apparontly r.sK\^[>.\vith his spaoious 
mouth wido opon, but softly singim;-. 

"Aro you aslooj), unolo T 

**' No, not ad/aokly asloop. boss. 1 jos wako up, 
and thinkin' how good d^^ Lord is, I couldn't lu>lp 
singin'." 

Tho panorama is always intori^sting. Thoro aro 
Avido silvory oxpansos of wator, iiUo Mhioli fall tho 
shadows of groat troos. A tug is dragging along a tow 
of old rafts oomposod o( oypross logs all wator-soak- 
od, groou with wooils and grass, so that it Kioks liko a 
floating gardon. Wliat pioturos ! CMustors of oaks 
on tho prairio; a pioturosquo c>ld ootton-pross; a house 
thatched with palmottoos; rioo- holds irrigated by 
pumps; darkies, tielddiauds, uuui and Momon, hoeing 
in tho oaue-tlelds, giving stalwart strokes that exhibit 
their robust figures; an oUl sugar -utill in ruin and 
viue-drapod: an old bogass ohimnoy against tho sky; 



78 South am? West. 

au antique oottoii-press ^vith its nioukloring roof sup- 
ported on timbers; a dark 3' on a mule motionless on 
the bank, clad in Attakapas cloth, liis slouch hat fall- 
ing about his head like a roof from which the rafters 
have been withdrawn; palmettoes, oaks, and funereal 
moss; lines of Spanish - bayonets ; rickety wharves; 
primitive boats; spider -legged bridges. Neither on 
the Teclie nor the Atchafalaya, nor on the great plain 
near the Mississippi, lit for amphibious creatures, 
where one standing on the level wonders to see the 
wheels of the vast river steamers above him, appar- 
ently without cause, revolving, is there any lack of the 
picturesque. 

New Iberia, the thriving mart of the region, which 
has drawn away the life from St. iMartinsville, ten 
miles farther up the bayou, is a village mainly of 
small frame houses, with a smart court-house, a lively 
business street, a few pretty houses, and some old- 
time mansions on the bank of the bayou, half smoth- 
ered in old rose gardens, the ground in the rear slop- 
ing to the water under the shade of gigantic oaks. 
One of them, which with its outside staircases in the 
pillared gallery suggests Spanish taste on the outside, 
and in the interior the arrangement of connecting 
rooms a French chateau, has a self-keeping rose gar- 
den, where one might easily become sentimental ; the 
vines disport themselves like holiday children, climb- 
ing the trees, the side of the house, and revelling in 
an abandon of color and perfume. 

The population is mixed — Americans, French, Ital- 
ians, now and then a Spaniard and even a Mexican, 
occasionally a basket-making Attakapas, and the all- 
pervading person of color. The darky is a born iisli- 



The Acadian Land. 79 

erman, in places where iishing requires no exertion, 
and one may sec him any hour seated on tlie banks 
of the Teehe, especially the boy and the sun-bonneted 
woman, placidly holding their poles over the muddy 
stream, and can study, if he like, the black face in ex- 
pectation of a bite. There too are the washer-women, 
with their tubs and a plank thrust into the water, 
and a handkerchief ot* bright colors for a turban. 
These people somehow never fail to be picturesque, 
whatever attitude they take, and they are not at all 
self-conscious. The grouj^s on Sunday give an in- 
terest to church-going — a lean white horse, with a 
man, his wife, and boy strung along its backbone, an 
aged darky and his wife seated in a cart, in stiff Sun- 
day clothes and Haming colors, the wheels of the cart 
making all angles with the ground, and wabbling and 
creaking along, the whole party as })roud of its ap- 
pearance as Julius Caisar in a trium])h. 

I drove on Sunday morning early from New Iberia 
to church at St. Martinsville. It was a lovely April 
morning. The way lay over fertile prairies, past line 
cane plantations, with some irrigation, and for a dis- 
tance along the pretty Teche, shaded by great live- 
oaks, and here and there a line magnolia-tree ; a coun- 
try with few houses, and those mostly shanties, but a 
sunny, smiling land, loved of the birds. We passed 
on our left the Spanish Lake, a shallow, irregular 
body of water. My driver was an ex-Confederate 
soldier, whose tramp with a musket through Virginia 
had not greatly enlightened him as to what it was all 
about. As to the Acadians, however, he had a de- 
cided opinion, and it was a poor one. Tliey are no 
good. "You ask them a question, and they shrug 



80 South and ^y€st. 

their sliouldcrs like a tarrapin — don't know no more'n 
a dead alligator ; only language they ever have is * no ' 
and Svhat?'" 

If St. Martinsville, once the seat of fashion, retains 
anything of its past elegance, its life has departed 
from it. It has stopped growing anything but old, 
and yet it has not much of interest that is antique ; it 
is a village of small white frame houses, with three or 
four big gaunt brick structures, two stories and a half 
high, with galleries, and here and there a Creole cot- 
tage, the stairs running up inside the galleries, over 
which roses climb in profusion. 

I went to breakfast at a French inn, kept by Ma- 
dame Castillo, a large red-brick house on the banks 
of the Teclic, where the live-oaks cast shadows upon 
the silvery stream. It had, of course, a double gal- 
lery. Below, the waiting-room, dining-room, and gen- 
eral assembly-room w^ere paved with brick, and instead 
of a door, Turkey-red curtains hung in the entrance, 
and blowing aside, hospitably invited the stranger 
within. The breakfast was neatly served, the house 
was scrupulously clean, and the guest felt the influ- 
ence of that personal hospitality which is always so 
pleasing. Madame offered me a seat in her pew in 
church, and meantime a chair on the upper gallery, 
which opened from large square sleeping chambers. 
In that fresh morning I thought I never had seen a 
more sweet and peaceful place than this gallery. 
Close to it grew graceful China-trees in full blossom 
and odor ; up and down the Teche were charming 
views under the oaks ; only the roofs of the town 
could be seen amid the foliage of China-trees ; and 
there was an atmosphere of repose in all the scene. 



The Acadian Land, 81 

It was Easter morning. I felt that I should like to 
linger there a week in absolute forgetfulness of the 
world. French is the ordinary language of the vil- 
lage, spoken mors or less corruptly by all colors. 

The Catholic church, a large and ugly structure, 
stands on the plaza, which is not at all like a Spanish 
plaza, but a veritable New England "green," with 
stores and shops on all sides — New England, except 
that the shops are open on Sunday. In the church 
apse is a noted and not bad painting of St. Martin, 
and at the bottom of one aisle a vast bank of black 
stucco clouds, with the Virgin standing on them, and 
the legend, "«/e sids Vimmaculee conception.'''' 

Country people were pouring into town for the 
Easter service and festivities — more blacks than 
whites — on horseback and in rickety carriages, and 
the horses were hitched on either side of the church. 
Before service the square was full of lively young col- 
ored lads cracking Easter-eggs. Two meet and strike 
together the eggs in their hands, and the one loses 
whose Q^^ breaks. A tough shell is a valuable pos- 
session. The custom provokes a good deal of larking 
and merriment. While this is going on, the worship- 
pers are making their Avay into the church through 
the throng, ladies in the neat glory of provincial 
dress, and high-stepping, saucy colored belles, yellow 
and black, the blackest in the most radiant apparel of 
violent pink and light blue, and now and then a soci- 
ety favorite in all the hues of the rainbow. The centre 
pews of the church are reserved for the whites, the 
seats of the side aisles for the negroes. When mass 
begins, the church is crowded. The boys, with occa- 
sional excursions into the vestibule to dip the finger 
G 



82 South and West 

in the holj-water, or perhaps say a prayer, are still 
winning and losing eggs on the green. 

On the gallery at the inn it is also Sunday. The 
air is full of odor. A strong south wind begins to 
blow. I think the south wdnd is the wind of memory 
and of longing. I wonder if the gay spirits of the 
last generation ever return to the scenes of their rev- 
elry? Will they come back to the theatre this Sun- 
day night, and to the Grand Ball afterwards? The 
admission to both is only twenty-five cents, including 
gombo file. 

From New Iberia southward towards Vermilion 
Bay stretches a vast prairie; if it is not absolutely 
flat, if it resembles the ocean, it is the ocean when its 
long swells have settled nearly to a calm. This prai- 
rie would be monotonous Avere it not dotted with 
small round ponds, like hand-mirrors for the flitting 
birds and sailing clouds, were its expanse not spotted 
with herds of cattle, scattered or clustering like fish- 
ing-boats on a green sea, were it not for a cabin here 
and there, a field of cane or cotton, a garden plot, and 
w^ere it not for the forests which break the horizon 
line, and send out dark capes into the verdant plains. 
On a gray day, or when storms and fogs roll in from 
the Gulf, it might be a gloomy region, but under the 
sunlight and in the spring it is full of life and color; 
it has an air of refinement and repose that is very 
welcome. Besides the uplift of the spirit that a wide 
horizon is apt to give, one is conscious here of the 
neighborhood of the sea, and of the possibilities of ro- 
mantic adventure in a coast intersected by bayous, 
and the presence of novel forms of animal and vege- 
table life, and of a people with habits foreign and 



The Acadian Land. 83 

strange. There is also a grateful sense of freedom 
and expansion. 

Soon, over the plain, is seen on the horizon, ten 
miles from New Iberia, the dark foliage on the island 
of Petite Anse, or Avery's Island. This unexpected 
upheaval from the marsh, bounded by the narrow, 
circling Petite Anse Bayou, rises into the sky one 
hundred and eighty feet, and has the effect in this 
flat expanse of a veritable mountain, comparatively a 
surprise, like Pike's Peak seen from the elevation of 
Denver. Perhaps nowhere else would a hill of one 
hundred and eighty feet make such an impression on 
the mind. Crossing the bayou, where alligators sun 
themselves and eye with affection tlie colored people 
angling at the bridge, and j)assing a long causeway 
over the marsh, the firm land of the island is reached. 
This island, which is a sort of geological puzzle, has a 
very uneven surface, and is some two and a half miles 
long by one mile broad. It is a little kingdom in it- 
self, capable of producing in its soil and adjacent wa- 
ters nearly everything one desires of the necessaries 
of life. A portion of the island is devoted to a cane 
plantation and sugar-works ; a part of it is co' ered 
with forests ; and on the lowlands and gentle slopes, 
besides thickets of palmetto, are gigantic live-oaks, 
moss-draped trees monstrous in girth, and towering 
into the sky with a vast spread of branches. Scarcely 
anywhere else will one see a nobler growth of these 
stately trees. In a depression is the famous salt- 
mine, unique in quality and situation in the world. 
Here is grown and put up the Tobasco pepper; here, 
amid fields of clover and flowers, a large apiary flour- 
ishes. Stones of some value for ornament are found. 



84 South and W,6t. 

Iiidood, I should not bo surprised iit anything turning 
up ihero. for I :\m told tli;U good kaoline has boon 
discovered; and about the residenoes of the hospitable 
proprietors roses bloom in abundance, the China-tree 
blossoms sweetly, and the inocking-bini sings. 

But better than all these things I think I like the 
view from the broad cottage piazzas, and I like it best 
when the salt breeze is strong enough to swoop away 
the coast mosquitoes — a most undesirable variety. I 
do not know another view of its kind for extent and 
color comparable to that from this hill over the wa- 
ters seaward. The expanse of luxuriant grass, brown, 
golden, reddish, in patches, is intersected by a net- 
work of bayous, which gleam like silver in the sun, 
or trail like dark fabulous serpents under a cloudy 
sky. The scene is limited OT\ly by the jK^'wor of the 
eye to meet the sky line. Vast and level, it is con- 
stantly changing, almost in motion with life : the 
long grass and woods run like waves when the wind 
blows, great shadows of clouds pass on its surface, 
alternating dark masses with vivid ones of sunlight; 
fishing-boats and the masts of schooners creep along 
the threads of water ; when the sun goes down, a red 
globe of lh*e in the Gulf mists, all the expanse is warm 
and ruddy, and the waters sparkle like jewels; and at 
night, under the great field of stars, marsh fires here 
and there give a sort of lurid splendor to the scene. 
In the winter it is a temperate spot, and at all times 
of the year it is blessed by an invigorating sea- 
breeze^ 

Those who have enjoyed the charming social life and 
the unbounded hospitality of the family who inhabit 
this island may euvy them their paradisiacal home, 



Th<:, Acadian Land. 85 

but tlioy would bo able to select none others so 
worthy to oujoy it. 

It is said that the Attakapas ludians arc shy of this 
island, having a legend that it was the scene of a 
great catastrophe to their race. Whether this catas- 
trophe has any connection with the upheaval of the 
salt mountain I do not know. Many stories are cur- 
rent in this region in regard to the discovery of this 
deposit. A little over a quarter of a century ago it 
was unsuspected. The presence of salt in the water 
of a small spring led somebody to dig in that place, 
and at the depth of sixteen feet below the surface 
solid salt was struck. In stripping away the soil sev- 
eral relics of human workmanship came to light, 
among them stono implements and a woven basket, 
exactly such as the Attakapas make now. This bas- 
ket, found at the depth of sixteen feet, lay upon the 
salt rock, and was in perfect preservation. Half of 
it can now be seen in the Smithsonian Institution. At 
the beginning of the war great quantities of salt were 
taken from this mine for the use of the Confederacy. 
But this supply was cut off by the Unionists, who at 
first sent gunboats up the bayou within shelling dis- 
tance, and at length occupied it with troops. 

The ascertained area of the mine is several acres; 
the depth of the deposit is unknown. The first shaft 
w\as sunk a hundred feet; below this a shaft of sev- 
enty feet fails to find any limit to the salt. The ex- 
cavation is already large. Descending, the visitor 
enters vast cathedral -like chambers; the sides are 
solid salt, sparkling with crystals; the floor is solid 
salt; the roof is solid salt, supported on pillars of salt 
left by the excavators, forty or perhaps sixty feet 



86 South and West, 

square. When the interior is lighted by dynamite the 
effect is superbly weird and grotesque. The salt is 
blasted by dynamite, loaded into cars which run on 
rails to the elevator, hoisted, and distributed into the 
crushers, and from the crushers directly into the bags 
for shipment. The crushers differ in crushing capac- 
ity, some producing fine and others coarse salt. Xo 
bleaching or cleansing process is needed; the salt is 
almost absolutely pure. Large blocks of it are sent 
to the Western plains for "cattle licks." The mine 
is connected by rail with the main line at Xew Iberia. 
Across the marshes and bayous eight miles to the 
west from Petite Anse Island rises Orange Island, fa- 
mous for its orange plantation, but called Jeft'erson 
Island since it became the property and home of 
Joseph Jefferson. Not so high as Petite Anse, it is 
still conspicuous with its crown of dark forest. From 
a high point on Petite Anse, through a lovely vista of 
trees, with flowering cacti in the foreground, Jeffer- 
son's house is a white spot in the landscape. We 
reached it by a circuitous drive of twelve miles over 
the prairie, sometimes in and sometimes out of the 
water, and continually diverted from our course by 
fences. It is a good sign of the thrift of the race, 
and of its independence, that the colored people have 
taken up or bought little tracts of thirty or forty 
acres, put up cabins, and new fences round their do- 
mains regardless of the travelling public. We zig- 
zagged all about the country to get round these little 
enclosures. At one place, where the main road was 
bad, a thrifty Acadian had set up a toll of twenty- 
five cents for the privilege of passing through his 
premises. The scenery was pastoral and pleasing. 



The Acadian Land. 87 

There were frequent roiuul poiuls, briUIant with lilies 
'A\\Afleurs-dedh,'M\^ huiulreds of eattle feeding on the 
prairie or standing in the water, and generally of a 
dun-eolor, made always an agreeable picture. The 
monotony was broken by lines of trees, by eape-like 
woods strctcliing into the plain, and the horizon line 
was always line. Great variety of birds enlivened 
the landscape, game birds abounding. There was the 
lively little nonpareil, which seems to change its col- 
or, and is red and green and blue, I believe of the 
oriole family, the papabotte, a favorite on New Or- 
leans tables in the autumn, snipe, killdee, the cherooke 
(snipe?), the meadow -lark, and. quantities of teal 
ducks in the ponds. Tliese little ponds are called 
"bull -holes." The traveller is told that they are 
started in this Avatery soil by the pawing of bulls, 
and gradually enlarged as the cattle frequent them. 
lie remembers that he has seen similar circular ponds 
in the North not made by bulls. 

Mr. Jefferson's residence — a j^retty rose-vine-covered 
cottage — is situated on the slope of the hill, overlook- 
ing a broad plain and a vast stretch of bayou country. 
Along one side of his home enclosure for a mile runs 
a superb hedge of Chickasaw roses. On the slope 
back of the house, and almost embracino^ it, is a maix- 
niticent grove of live-oaks, great gray stems, and the 
branches hung with heavy masses of moss, which 
swing in the wind like the pendent boughs of the 
willow, and with something of its sentimental and 
mournful suggestion. The recesses of this forest are 
cool and dark, but upon ascending the hill, suddenTy 
bursts upon the view under the trees a most lovely 
lake of clear blue water. This lake, which may be 



88 South and West. 

a mile long and half a mile broad, is called Lake 
Peigneur, from its fanciful resemblance, I believe, to 
a wool-comber. The shores are wooded. On the isl- 
and side the bank is precipitous ; on the opposite 
shore amid the trees is a hunting-lodge, and I believe 
there are plantations on the north end, but it is in as- 
pect altogether solitary and peaceful. But the island 
did not want life. The day was brilliant, with a deep 
blue sky and high-sailing fleecy clouds, and it seemed 
a sort of animal holiday : squirrels chattered ; cardi- 
nal-birds flashed through the green leaves; there 
flitted about the red-winged blackbird, blue jays, red- 
headed woodpeckers, thrushes, and occasionally a rain- 
crow crossed the scene ; high overhead sailed the 
heavy buzzards, describing great aerial circles ; and 
off in the still lake the ugly heads of alligators were 
toasting in the sun. 

It was very pleasant to sit on the wooded point, en- 
livened by all tliis animal activity, looking off upon 
the lake and the great expanse of marsh, over which 
came a refreshing breeze. There was great variety 
of forest -trees. Besides the live-oaks, in one small 
area I noticed the water-oak, red-oak, pin -oak, the elm, 
the cypress, the hackberry, and the pecan tree. 

This point is a favorite rendezvous for the buzzards. 
Before I reached it I heard a tremendous whirring in 
the air, and, lo ! there upon the oaks were hundreds 
and hundreds of buzzards. Upon one dead tree, vast, 
gaunt, and bleached, they had settled in black masses. 
When I came near they rose and flew about v>'ith 
clamor and surprise, momentarih^ obscuring the sun- 
light. With these unpleasant birds consorted in un- 
clean fellowship numerous long-necked water-turkeys. 



The Acadian Land. 89 

Dore would have liked to introduce into one of his 
melodramatic pictures this helpless dead tree, extend- 
ing its gray arms loaded with these black scavengers. 
It needed the blue sky and blue lake to prevent the 
scene from being altogether uncanny. I remember 
still the harsh, croaking noise of the buzzards and the 
water-turkeys when they were disturbed, and the flap- 
ping of their funereal wings, and perhaps the alliga- 
tors lying off in the lake noted it, for they grunted 
and bellowed a response. But the birds sang merrily, 
the wind blew softly ; there was the repose as of a 
far country undisturbed by man, and a silvery tone 
on the water and all the landscape that refined the 
whole. 

If the Acadians can anywhere be seen in the pros- 
perity of their primitive simplicity, I fancy it is in 
the parish of Vermilion, in the vicinity of Abbeville 
and on the Bayou Tigre. Here, among the intricate 
bayous that are their highways and supply them with 
the poorer sort of fish, and the fair meadows on which 
their cattle pasture, and where they grow nearly ev- 
erything their simple habits require, they have for 
over a century enjoyed a quiet existence, practically 
undisturbed by the agitations of modern life, ignorant 
of its progress. History makes their departure from 
the comparatively bleak meadows of Grand Pre a 
cruel hardship, if a political necessity. But they 
made a very fortunate exchange. Nowhere else on 
the continent could they so well have preserved their 
primitive habits, or found climate and soil so suited 
to their humor. Others have exhaustively set forth the 
history and idiosyncrasies of this peculiar people ; it 
is in my way only to -tell what I saw on a spring da}^ 



90 South and West, 

To reach the heart of this abode of contented and 
perhaps wise ignorance we took boats early one morn- 
ing at Petite Anse Island, while the dew was still 
heavy and the birds were at matins, and rowed down 
the Petite Anse Bayou. A stranger would surely be 
lost in these winding, branching, interlacing streams. 
Evangeline and her lover might have passed each 
other unknown within hail across these marshes. The 
party of a dozen peoj^le occupied two row-boats. 
Among them were gentlemen who knew the route, 
but the reserve of wisdom as to what bayous and cut- 
offs were navicrable was an ancient ex-slave, now a 
voter, who responded to the name of " Honorable " — 
a weather-beaten and weather-wise darky, a redoubt- 
able fisherman, whose memory extended away beyond 
the war, and played familiarly about the person of 
!l^afayette, with whom he had been on agreeable terms 
in Charleston, and who dated his narratives, to our 
relief, not from the war, but from the year of some 
great sickness on the coast. From the Petite Anse 
we entered the Carlin Bayou, and wound through it 
is needless to say what others in our tortuous course. 
In the fresh morning, with the salt air, it was a voy- 
age of delight. Mullet were jumping in the glassy 
stream, perhaps disturbed by the gar-fish, and alliga- 
tors lazily slid from the reedy banks into the water at 
our approach. All the marsh was gay with flowers, 
vast patches of the \Avie fleur-de-lis intermingled with 
the exquisite white spider-lily, nodding in clusters on 
long stalks ; an amaryllis (pancratium), its pure half- 
disk fringed with delicate white filaments. The air 
was vocal with the notes of birds, the nonpareil and the 
meadow-lark, and most conspicuous of all the hand- 



The Acadian Land. 91 

some boat -tail grackle, a blackbird, which alighted 
on the slender dead reeds that swayed with his 
weight as he poured forth his song. Sometimes the 
bayou narrowed so that it was impossible to row with 
the oars, and poling was resorted to, and the current 
was swift and strong. At such passes we saw only 
the banks w^ith nodding flowers, and the reeds, w^ith 
the blackbirds singing, against the sky. Again we 
emerged into placid reaches overliung by gigantic 
live-oaks t^nd fringed with cypress. It Avas enchant- 
ing. But the way was not quite solitary. Numerous 
fishing parties were encountered, boats on their way 
to the bay, and now^ and then a party of stalwart men 
drawing a net in the bayou, their clothes being de- 
posited on the banks. Occasionally a large schooner 
was seen, tied to the bank or slowly working its Avay, 
and on one a whole family was domesticated. There 
is a good deal of queer life hidden in these bayous. 

After passing through a narrow* artificial canal, we 
came into the Bayou Tigre, and landed for breakfast 
on a greensward, with meadow-land and signs of hab- 
itations in the distance, under spreading live - oaks. 
Under one of the most attractive of these trees, close 
to the stream, we did not spread our table-cloth and 
shawls, because a large moccason snake was seen to 
glide under the roots, and we did not .know but that 
liis modesty was assumed, and he might join the 
breakfast party. It is said that these snakes never 
attack any one who has kept all the ten command- 
ments from his youth up. Cardinal-birds made the 
wood gay for us while we breakfasted, and we might 
have added plenty of partridges to our menu if we 
had been armed. 



92 South and West. 

Rosuming our voyage, we presently entered the in- 
habited part of the bayou, among cultivated fields, 
and made our first call on the Thibodeaux. They had 
been expecting us, and Andonia came down to the 
landing to welcome us, and with a formal, pretty 
courtesy led the way to the house. Does the reader 
happen to remember, say in New England, say fifty 
years ago, the sweetest maiden lady in the village, 
prim, staid, full of kindness, the proportions of the 
figure never quite developed, with a row of small 
corkscrew curls about her serene forehead, and all the 
juices of life that might have overflowed into the life 
of others somehow withered into the sweetness of her 
wistful face ? Yes; a little timid and appealing, and 
yet trustful, and in a scant, quaint gown ? Well, An- 
donia was never married, and she had such curls, and 
a high-waisted gown, and a kerchief folded across her 
breast; and when she spoke, it was in the language of 
France as it is rendered in Acadia. 

The house, like all in this region, stands upon blocks 
of wood, is in appearance a frame house, but the walls 
between timbers are of concrete mixed with moss, 
and the same inside as out. It had no glass in the 
windows, which were closed with solid shutters. Upon 
the rough walls were hung sacred pictures and other 
crudely colored prints. The furniture was rude and 
apparently home-made, and the whole interior was as 
painfully neat as a Dutch parlor. Even the beams 
overhead and ceiling had been scrubbed. Andonia 
showed us with a blush of pride her neat little sleep- 
ing-room, with its souvenirs of affection, and perhaps 
some of the dried flowers of a possible romance, and 
the ladies admired the finely woven white counterpane 



Tlie Acadian Land. 93 

on the bed. Andonia's married sister was a large, 
handsome woman, smiling and prosperous. There 
were children and, I think, a baby about, besides Mr. 
Thibodeaux. Nothing could exceed the kindly man- 
ner of these people. Andonia showed us how they 
card, weave, and spin the cotton out of which their 
blankets and the jean for their clothing are made. 
They use the old-fashioned hand-cards, spin on a little 
wheel with a foot - treadle, have the most primitive 
warping-bars, and weave most laboriously on a rude 
loom. But the cloth they make will wear forever, and 
the colors they use are all fast. It is a great pleasure, 
\sQ might almost say shock, to encounter such honest 
work in these times. The Acadians grow a yellow or 
nankeen sort of cotton which, without requiring any 
dye, is woven into a handsome yellow stuff. When 
we departed Andonia slipped into the door-yard, and 
returned with a rose for each of us. I fancied she 
was loath to have us go, and that the visit was an 
event in the monotony of her single life. 

Embarking again on the placid stream, we moved 
along through a land of peace. The houses of the 
Acadians are scattered along the bayou at considera- 
ble distances apart. The voyager seems to be in an 
unoccupied country, when suddenly the turn of the 
stream shows him a farm-house, with its little landing- 
wharf, boats, and perhaps a schooner moored at the 
bank, and behind it cultivated fields and a fringe of 
trees. In the blossoming time of the year, when the 
birds are most active, these scenes are idyllic. At a 
bend in the bayou, where a tree sent its horizontal 
trunk half across it, we made our next call, at the 
house of Mr Vallet, a large frame house, and evi- 



94 South and West. 

dently the abode of a man of means. The house was 
ceiled outside and inside with native woods. As usual 
in this region, the premises were not as orderly as 
those about some Northern farm-houses, but the inte- 
rior of the house was spotlessly clean, and in its polish 
and barrenness of ornament and of appliances of com- 
fort suggested a Brittany home, while its openness 
and the broad veranda spoke of a genial climate. Our 
call here was brief, for a sick man, \^yy ill, they said, 
lay in the front room — a stranger who had been over- 
taken with fever, and was being cared for by these 
kind-hearted people. 

Other calls were made — this visiting by boat recalls 
Venice — but the end of our voyage was the plantation 
of Simonette Le Blanc, a sturdy old man, a sort of pa- 
triarch in this region, the centre of a very large fami- 
ly of sons, daughters, and grandchildren. The resi- 
dence, a rambling story-and-a-half house, grown by 
accretions as more room was needed, calls for no com- 
ment. It was all very plain, and contained no books, 
nor any adornments except some family photographs, 
the poor work of a travelling artist. But in front, on 
the bayou, Mr. Le Blanc had erected a grand ball- 
room, which gave an air of distinction to the place. 
This hall, which had benches along the wall, and at 
one end a high dais for the fiddlers, and a little counter 
where the gombo file (the common refreshment) is 
served, had an air of gayety by reason of engravings 
cut from the illustrated papers, and was shown with 
some pride. Here neighborhood dances take place 
once in two weeks, and a grand ball was to come off 
on Easter-Sunday night, to which we were urgently 
invited to come. 



The Acadian Land. 95 

Simonette Le Blanc, with several of his sons, had 
returned at midnight from an expedition to Vermil- 
ion Bay, where they had been camping for a couple 
of weeks, fishing and taking oysters. Working the 
schooner through the bayou at night had been fatigu- 
ing, and then there was supper, and all the news of 
the fortnight to be talked over, so that it was four 
o'clock before the house was at rest, but neither the 
hale old man nor his stalwart sons seemed the worse 
for the adventure. Such trips are not uncommon, for 
these people seem to have leisure for enjoyment, and 
vary the toil of the plantation with the pleasures of 
fishing and lazy navigation. But to the women and 
the home-stayers this was evidently an event. The 
men had been to the outer world, and brought back 
with them the gossip of the bayous and the simple 
incidents of the camping life on the coast. "There 
was a great deal to talk over that had happened in a 
fortnight," said Simonette — he and one of his sons 
spoke English. I do not imagine that the talk was 
about politics, or any of the events that seem impor- 
tant in other portions of the United States, only the 
faintest echoes of wdiich ever reach this secluded place. 
This is a purely domestic and patriarchal community, 
where there are no books to bring in agitating doubts, 
and few newspapers to disquiet the nerves. The only 
matter of politics broached was in regard to an appro- 
priation by Congress to improve a cut-off between 
two bayous. So far as I could learn, the most intelli- 
gent of these people had no other interest in or con- 
cern about the Government. There is a neighborhood 
school where English is taught, but no church nearer 
than Abbeville, six miles away. I should not describe 



96 South and ^Yest. 

the population as fanatically religious, nor a church- 
going one except on sj^ecial days. But by all accounts 
it is moral, orderly, sociable, fond of dancing, thrifty, 
and conservative. 

The Acadians are fond of their homes. It is not 
the fashion for the young people to go away to better 
their condition. Few young men have ever been as 
far from home as New Orleans ; they marry young, 
and settle down near the homestead. Mr. Le Blanc 
has a colony of his descendants about him, within 
hail from his door. It must be large, and his race 
must be prolific, judging by the number of small chil- 
dren w^ho gathered at the homestead to have a sly 
l^eep at the strangers. They took small interest in 
the war, and it had few attractions for them. The 
conscription carried away many of their young men, 
but I am told they did not make very good soldiers, 
not because they were not stalwart and brave, but 
because they were so intolerably homesick that they 
deserted whenever they had a chance. The men 
whom we saw were most of them fine athletic fellows, 
with honest, dark, sun - browned faces ; some of the 
children were very pretty, but the women usually 
showed the effects of isolation and toil, and had the 
common plainness of French peasants. They are a 
self-supporting communit}^, raise their own cotton, 
corn, and sugar, and for the most part manufacture 
their own clothes and articles of household use. 
Some of the cotton jeans, striped with blue, indigo- 
dyed, made into garments for men and women, and 
the blankets, plain yellow (from the native nankeen 
cotton), curiously clouded, are very pretty and serv- 
iceable. Further than that their habits of living are 



The Acadian Land, 97 

simple, and their ways primitive, I saw few eccen- 
tricities. The peculiarity of this community is in its 
freedom from all the hurry and worry and informa- 
tion of our modern life. I have read that the gallants 
train their little horses to prance and curvet and rear 
and fidget about, and that these are called " courtin' 
horses," and are used when a young man goes court- 
ing, to impress his mistress with his manly horseman- 
ship. I have seen these horses perform under the 
saddle, but I was not so fortunate as to see any court- 
ing going on. 

In their given as w^ell as their family names these 
people are classical and peculiar. I heard, of men, 
the names L'Odias, Peigneur, Niolas, Elias, Homere, 
Lemaire, and of women, Emilite, Segoura, Antoinette, 
Clarise, Elia. 

We were very hospitably entertained by the Le 
Blancs. On our arrival tiny cups of black coffee were 
handed round, and later a drink of syrup and water, 
which some of the party sijjped with a sickly smile 
of enjoyment. Before dinner we walked up to the 
bridge over the bayou on the road leading to Abbe- 
ville, where there is a little cluster of houses, a small 
country store, and a closed drug-shop — the owner of 
which had put up his shutters and gone to a more 
unhealthy region. Here is a fine grove of oaks, and 
from the bridge we had in viev/ a grand sweep of 
prairie, with trees, single and in masses, which made 
with the winding silvery stream a very pleasing pict- 
ure. We sat down to a dinner — the women waiting 
on the table — of gombo file, fried oysters, eggs, sweet- 
potatoes (the delicious saccharine, stickj^ sort), with 
syrup out of a bottle served in little saucers, and af- 



98 South and West. 

terwards black coffee. AVe were sincerely welcome 
to whatever the house contained, and when we de- 
parted the whole family, and indeed all the neighbor- 
hood, accompanied us to our boats, and we went away 
down the stream with a chorus of adieus and good 
wishes. 

We were watching for a hail from the Thibodeaux. 
The doors and shutters were closed, and the mansion 
seemed blank and forgetful. But as we came oppo- 
site the landing, there stood Andonia, faithful, waving 
her handkerchief. Ah rae! 

We went home gayly and more swiftly, current 
and tide with us, though a little pensive, perhaps, with 
too much pleasure and the sunset effects on the wide 
marshes through which we voyaged. Cattle wander 
at will over these marshes, and are often stalled and 
lost. We saw some pitiful sights. The cattle vent- 
uring too near the boggy edge to drink become in- 
extricably involved. We passed an ox sunken to 
his back, and dead; a cow frantically struggling in 
the mire, almost exhausted, and a cow and calf, the 
mother dead, the calf moaning beside her. On a cat- 
tle lookout near by sat three black buzzards survey- 
ing the prospect with hungry eyes. 

When we landed and climbed the hill, and from 
the rose -embowered veranda looked back over the 
strange land we had sailed through, away to Bayou 
Tigre, where the red sun was setting, we felt that we 
had been in a country that is not of this world. 



VI. 
THE SOUTH EEYISITED. 

IN 1SS7. 

In speaking again of the South in Harper's 
Monthly, after an interval of about two years, and 
as before at the request of the editor, I said, I shrink 
a good deal from the appearance of forwardness 
which a second paper may seem to give to observa- 
tions which have the single purpose of contributing 
my mite towards making the present spirit of the 
Southern people, their progress in industries and in 
education, their aspirations, better known. On the 
other hand, I have no desire to escape the imputation 
of a warm interest in the South, and of a belief that 
its development and prosperity are essential to the 
greatness and glory of the nation. Indeed, no one 
can go through the South, with his eyes open, without 
having his patriotic fervor quickened and broadened, 
and without increased pride in the republic. 

We are one people. Different traditions, different 
education or the lack of it, the demoralizing curse of 
slavery, different prejudices, made us look at life from 
irreconcilable points of view; but the prominent com- 
mon feature, after all, is our Americanism. In any 
assembly of gentlemen from the two sections the re- 
semblances are greater than the differences. A score 
of times I have heard it said, "We look alike, talk 



100 South and West. 

alike, feci alike ; how strange it is we should have 
fought!" Personal contact always tends to remove 
prejudices, and to bring into prominence the national 
feeling, the race feeling, the human nature common 
to all of us. 

I wish to give as succinctly as I can the general 
impressions of a recent six weeks' tour, made by a 
company of artists and writers, which became known 
as the "Harper party," through a considerable por- 
tion of the South, including the cities of Lynchburg, 
Richmond, Danville, Atlanta, Augusta (with a brief 
call at Charleston and Columbia, for it was not in- 
tended to take in the eastern seaboard on this trij)), 
Knoxville, Chattanooga, South Pittsburg, Xashville, 
Ijirmingham, Montgomery, Pensacola, Mobile, New 
Orleans, Baton Rouge, Vicksburg, Memphis, Louis- 
ville. Points of great interest Avere necessarily omit- 
ted in a tour which could only include representa- 
tives of the industrial and educational development 
of the New South. Naturally we were thrown more 
with business men and with educators than with oth- 
ers ; that is, with those who are actually making the 
New South ; but we saw something of social life, 
something of the homes and mode of living of every 
class, and we had abundant opportunities of conversa- 
tion with w^hites and blacks of every social grade and 
political affinity. The Southern people were anxious 
to show us what they were doing, and they expressed 
their sentiments with entire frankness ; if we were 
misled, it is. our own fault. It must be noted, how- 
ever, in estimating the value of our observations, that 
they were mainly made in cities and large villages, 
and little in the country districts. 



The South Remsited. 101 

Inquiries in the South as to the feeling of the 
North sliow that there is still left some misapprehen- 
sion of the spirit in which the North sent out its 
armies, though it is beginning to be widely under- 
stood that the North was not animated by hatred of 
the South, but by intense love of the Union. On the 
other hand, I have no doubt there still lingers in the 
North a little misapprehension of the present feeling 
of the Southern people about the Union. It arises 
from a confusion of two facts which it is best to speak 
of plainly. Everybody knows that the South is 
heartily glad that slavery is gone, and that a new era 
of freedom has set in. Everybody who knows the 
South at all is aware that any idea of any renewal of 
the strife, now or at any time, is nowhere entertained, 
even as a speculation, and that to the women espe- 
cially, who are said to be first in war, last in peace, 
and first in the hearts of their countrymen, the idea 
of war is a subject of utter loathing. The two facts 
to which I refer are the loyalty of the Southern whites 
to the Union, and their determination to rule in do- 
mestic affairs. Naturally there are here and there 
soreness and some bitterness over personal loss and 
ruin, life-long grief, maybe, over lost illusions — the 
observer who remembers what human nature is won- 
ders that so little of this is left — but the great fact is 
that the South is politically loyal to the Union of the 
States, that the sentiment for its symbol is growing 
into a deep reality which would flame out in passion 
under any foreign insult, and that nationality, pride 
in the republic, is everywhere strong and prominent. 
It is hardly necessary to say this, but it needs to be 
emphasized when the other fact is dwelt on, namely. 



102 Bouth and ^Yest. 

the denial of free suffrage to the colored man. These 
two things are confused, and this confusion is tlie 
source of much political misunderstanding. Often 
when a Southern election " outrage " is telegraphed, 
when intimidation or fraud is revealed, it is said in 
print, "So that is Southern loyalty!" In short, the 
political treatment of the negro is taken to be a sign 
of surviving war feeling, if not of a renewed purpose 
of rebellion. In this year of grace 1887 the two 
things have no relation to each other. It would be 
as true to say that election frauds and violence to in- 
dividuals and on the ballot-box in Cincinnati are signs 
of hatred of the Union and of Union men, as that a 
suppressed negro vote at the South, by adroit man- 
agement or otherwise, is indication of remaining hos- 
tility to the Union. In the South it is sometimes due 
to the same depraved party spirit that causes frauds 
in the North — the determination of a party to get or 
keep the upperhand at all hazards ; but it is, in its 
origin and generally, simply the result of the resolu- 
tion of the majority of the brains and property of 
the South to govern the cities and the States, and in 
the Southern mind this is perfectly consistent with 
entire allegiance to the Government. I could name 
men who were abettors of what is called the " shot- 
gun policy" whose national patriotism is beyond 
question, and who are warm promoters of negro edu- 
cation and the improvement of the condition of the 
colored people. 

We might as well go to the bottom of this state of 
things, and look it squarely in the face. Under re- 
construction, sometimes owing to a tardy acceptance 
of the new conditions by the ruling class, the State 



The South Bevisited. 103 

governments and the municipalities fell under the 
control of ignorant colored people, guided by un- 
scrupulous white adventurers. States and cities were 
prostrate under the heel of ignorance and fraud, 
crushed with taxes, and no improvements to show for 
them. It was ruin on the way to universal bankruptcy. 
The regaining of power by the intelligent and the 
property owners Avas a question of civilization. The 
situation was intolerable. There is no Northern com- 
munity that would have submitted to it ; if it could 
not have been changed by legal process, it would have 
been upset by revolution, as it was at the South. Rec- 
ognizing as we must the existence of race prejudice 
and pride, it was nevertheless a struggle for existence. 
The methods resorted to were often violent, and be- 
ing sweeping, carried injustice. To be a Republican, 
in the eyes of those smarting under carpet-bag gov- 
ernment and the rule of the ignorant latel}^ enfran- 
chised, was to be identified with the detested carpet- 
bag government and with negro rule. The Southern 
Unionist and the Northern emigrant, who justly re- 
garded the name Republican as the proudest they 
could bear, identified as it was with the preservation 
of the Union and the national credit, could not show 
their Republican principles at the polls without per- 
sonal danger in the country and social ostracism in 
the cities. Social ostracism on account of politics 
even outran social ostracism on account of participa- 
tion in the education of the negroes. The very men 
who would say, " I respect a man who fought for the 
Union more than a Northern Copperhead, and if I 
had lived North, no doubt I should have gone with 
my section," would at the same time say, or think,. 



104 SaiUh and West. 

"But you cannot be a Republican down here now, 
for to be that is to identify yourself with the party 
here that is hostile to everything in life that is dear 
to us." This feeling was intensified by the memories 
of the war, but it was in a measure distinct from the 
war feeling, and it lived on when the latter grew 
weak, and it still survives in communities perfectly 
loyal to the Union, glad that slavery is ended, and 
sincerely desirous of the establishment and improve- 
ment of public education for colored and white alike. 
Any tampering with the freedom of the ballot-box 
in a republic, no matter what the provocation, is dan- 
gerous ; the methods used to regain white ascendancy 
were speedily adopted for purely party purposes and 
factional purposes ; the chicanery, even the violence, 
employed to render powerless the negro and '' carpet- 
bag " vote were freely used by partisans in local elec- 
tions against each other, and in time became means of 
preserving party and ring ascendancy. Thoughtful 
men South as well as North recognize the vital dan- 
ger to popular government if voting and the ballot- 
box are not sacredly protected. In a recent election 
in Texas, in a district where, I am told, the majority 
of the inhabitants are white, and the majority of the 
whites are Republicans, and the majority of the col- 
ored voters voted the Republican ticket, and greatly 
the larger proportion of the wealth and business of 
the district are in Republican hands, there was an 
election row ; ballot-boxes were destroyed in several 
precincts, persons killed on both sides, and leading 
Republicans driven out of the State. This is barba- 
rism. If the case is substantiated as stated, that in the 
district it was not a question of race ascendancy, but 



The South Bevisited. 105 

of party ascendancy, no fair-minded man in the South 
can do otherwise than condemn it, for under such con- 
ditions not only is a republican form of government 
impossible, but development and prosperity are im- 
possible. 

For this reason, and because separation of voters 
on class lines is always a peril, it is my decided im- 
pression that throughout the South, though not by 
everj^body, a breaking up of the solidarity of the 
South would be welcome ; that is to say, a breaking 
up of both the negro and the white vote, and the re- 
forming upon lines of national and economic policy, 
as in the old days of Whig and Democrat, and liberty 
of free action in all local affairs, without regard to 
color or previous party relations. There are politi- 
cians who would preserve a solid South, or as a coun- 
terpart a solid North, for party purposes. But the 
sense of the country, the perception of business men 
North and South, is that this condition of politics in- 
terferes with the free play of industrial development, 
with emigration, investment of capital, and with that 
untrammelled agitation and movement in society 
which are the life of prosperous States. 

Let us come a little closer to the subject, dealing al- 
together with facts, and not Avith opinions. The Re- 
publicans of the North protest against the injustice 
of an increased power in the Lower House and in the 
Electoral College based upon a vote which is not rep- 
resented. It is a valid protest in law ; there is no an- 
swer to it. What is the reply to it ? The substance 
of hundreds of replies to it is that "we dare not let 
go so long as the negroes all vote together, regardless 
of local considerations or any economic problems what- 



106 Soutk and West. 

ever ; Ave are in danger of a return to a rule of igno- 
rance that was intolerable, and as long as you wave 
the bloody shirt at the INorth, which means to us a 
return to that rule, the South will be solid." The re- 
mark made by one man of political prominence was 
perhaps typical : " The waving of the bloody shirt 
suits me exactly as a political game ; we should have 
hard work to keep our State Democratic if you did 
not wave it." So the case stands. The Republican 
party will always insist on freedom, not only of politi- 
cal opinion, but of action, in every part of the Union ; 
and the South will keep " solid " so long as it fears, or 
so long as politicians can persuade it to fear, the re- 
turn of the late disastrous domination. And recog- 
nizing this fact, and sj^eaking in the interest of no 
party, but only in that of better understanding and of 
the prosperity of the whole country, I cannot doubt 
that the way out of most of our complications is in 
letting the past drop absolutely, and addressing our- 
selves with sympathy and good-will all around to the 
great economical problems and national issues. And 
I believe that in this way also lies the speediest and 
most permanent good to the colored as well as the 
white population of the South. 

There has been a great change in the aspect of the 
South and in its sentiment within two years ; or per- 
haps it would be more correct to say that the change 
maturing for fifteen years is more apparent in a period 
of comparative rest from race or sectional agitation. 
The educational development is not more marvellous 
than the industrial, and both are unparalleled in his- 
tory. Let us begin by an illustration. 

I stood one day before an assembly of four hundred 



The South Eevisited. 107 

pupils of a colored college — called a college, but with 
a necessary preparatory department — children and 
well-grown young women and men. Tlie buildhigs 
are tine, spacious, not inferior to the best modern edu- 
cational buildings either in architectural appearance 
or in interior furnishing, with scientitic apparatus, a 
library, the appliances approved by recent experience 
in teaching, with admirable methods and discipline, 
and an accomplished corps of instructors. The schol- 
ars were neat, orderly, intelligent in appearance. As 
I stood for a moment or two lookino- at their brio-ht 
expectant faces the profound significance of the spec- 
tacle and the situation came over me, and I said : '* I 
wonder if you know what you are doing, if you real- 
ize what this means. Here you are in a school the 
equal of any of its grade in the land, with better 
methods of instruction than prevailed anywhere when 
I was a boy, with the gates of all knowledge opened 
as freely to you as to any youth in the land — here, in 
this State, where only about twenty years ago it was 
a misdemeanor, punishable with fine and imprison- 
ment, to teach a colored person to read and write. 
And I am brought here to see this fine school, as one 
of the best things he can show me in the city, by a 
Confederate colonel. Kot in all history is there any 
instance of a change like this in a quarter of a cen- 
tury : no, not in one nor in two hundred years. It 
seems incredible." 

This is one of the schools instituted and sustained 
by Xorthern friends of the South; but while it exhib- 
its the capacity of the colored people for education, it 
is not so significant in the view we are now taking of 
the New South as the public schools. Indeed, next 



108 South and West. 

to the amazing industrial change in the South, noth- 
ing is so striking as the interest and progress in the 
matter of public schools. In all the cities we visited 
the people were enthusiastic about their common 
schools. It was a common remark, " I suppose we 
have one of the best school systems in the countr3^" 
There is a wholesome rivalry to have the best. We 
found everywhere the graded system and the newest 
methods of teaching in vogue. In many of the pri- 
mary rooms in both white and colored schools, when 
I asked if these little children knew the alphabet when 
they came to school, the reply was, " Not generally. 
We prefer they should not; we use the new method 
of teaching Avords." In many schools the youngest 
pupils Avere taught to read music by sight, and to un- 
derstand its notation by exercises on the blackboard. 
In the higher classes generally, the instruction in arith- 
metic, in reading, in geography, in history, and in lit- 
erature was wholly in the modern method. In some 
of the geography classes and in the language classes I 
was reminded of the drill in the German schools. In 
all the cities, as far as I could learn, the public money 
was equally distributed to the colored and to the 
white schools, and the number of schools bore a just 
proportion to the number of the two races. When 
the town was equally divided in population, the num- 
ber of pupils in the colored schools was about the 
same as the number in the white schools. There was 
this exception: though provision was made for a high- 
school to terminate the graded for both colors, the 
number in the colored high-school department was 
usually very small; and the reason given by colored 
and white teachers was that the colored children had 



The South Revisited. 109 

not yet worked up to it. The colored people prefer 
teachers of their own race, and they are quite gener- 
ally employed; but many of the colored schools have 
■svhite teachers, and generally, I think, with better re- 
sults, although I saw many thoroughly good colored 
teachers, and one or tv/o colored classes under them 
that compared favorably with any white classes of the 
same grade. 

The great fact, however, is that the common-school 
system has become a part of Southern life, is every- 
where accepted as a necessity, and usually money is 
freely voted to sustain it. But practically, as an effi- 
cient factor in civilization, the system is yet undevel- 
oped in the country districts. I can only speak from 
personal observation of the cities, but the universal 
testimony was that the common schools in the coun- 
try for both whites and blacks are poor. Three 
months' schooling in the year is about the rule, and 
that of a slack and inferior sort, under incompetent 
teachers. In some places the colored peoj^le complain 
that ignorant teachers are put over them, who are 
chosen simply on political considerations. More than 
one respectable colored man told me that he would 
not send his children to such schools, but combined 
with a few others to get them private instruction. 
The colored people are more dependent on public 
schools than the whites, for while there are vast mass- 
es of colored people in city and country who have nei- 
ther the money nor the disposition to sustain schools, 
in all the large places the whites are able to have ex- 
cellent private schools, and do have them. Scarcely 
anywhere can the colored people as yet have a private 
school without white aid from somewhere. At the 



110 South and West. 

present rate of progress, and even of the increase of 
tax-paying ability, it must be a long time before the 
ignorant masses, white and black, in the country dis- 
tricts, scattered over a wide area, can have public 
schools at all efficient. The necessity is great. The 
danger to the State of ignorance is more and more ap- 
prehended; and it is upon this that many of the best 
men of the South base their urgent appeal for tem- 
porary aid from the Federal Government for public 
schools. It is seen that a State cannot soundly pros- 
per imless its laborers are to some degree intelligent. 
This opinion is shown in little things. One of the 
great planters of the Yazoo Delta told me that he 
used to have no end of trouble in settling with his 
hands. But now that numbers of them can read and 
cipher, and exjDlain the accounts to the others, he never 
has the least trouble. 

One cannot speak too highly of the private schools 
in the South, especially of those for young women. I 
do not know what they were before the war, probably 
mainly devoted to " accomplishments," as most of 
girls' schools -in the North were. Now most of them 
are wider in range, thorough in discipline, excellent 
in all the modern methods. Some of them, under ac- 
complished women, are entirely in line with the best 
in the country. Before leaving this general subject 
of education, it is necessary to say that the advisabili- 
ty of industrial training, as supplementary to book- 
learning, is growing in favor, and that in some colored 
schools it is tried with good results. 

When we come to the New Industrial South the 
change is marvellous, and so vast and various that I 
scarcely know where to begin in a short paper that 



The South Bevisited. Ill 

cannot go much into details. Instead of a South de- 
voted to agriculture and politics, we find a South wide 
awake to business, excited and even astonished at the 
development of its own immense resources in metals, 
marbles, coal, timber, fertilizers, eagerly laying lines 
of communication, rapidly opening mines, building 
furnaces, founderies, and all sorts of shops for util- 
izing the native riches. It is like the discovery of a 
new world. When the Northerner finds great foun- 
deries in Virginia using only (with slight exceptions) 
the products of Virginia iron and coal mines ; when 
he finds Alabama and Tennessee making iron so good 
and so cheap that it finds ready market in Pennsylva- 
nia, and founderies multiplying near the great fur- 
naces for supplying Northern markets ; when he finds 
cotton -mills running to full capacity on grades of 
cheap cottons universally in demand throughout the 
South and South-west; when he finds small industries, 
such as paper-box factories and wooden bucket and 
tub factories, sending all they can make into the 
North and widely over the West; when he sees the 
loads of most beautiful marbles shipped North ; when 
he learns that some of the largest and most important 
engines and mill machiner}^ were made in Southern 
shops ; when he finds in Richmond a " pole locomo- 
tive," made to run on logs laid end to end, and drag 
out from Michigan forests and Southern swamps lum- 
ber hitherto inaccessible; when he sees worn-out high- 
lands in Georgia and Carolina bear more cotton than 
ever before by help of a fertilizer the base of which is 
the cotton-seed itself (worth more as a fertilizer than 
it was before the oil was extracted from it); when he 
sees a multitude of small shops giving employment to 



112 South and West. 

men, women, and children who never had any work of 
that sort to do before ; and when he sees Roanoke 
iron cast in Richmond into car-irons, and returned to 
a car-factory in Roanoke whicli last year sold three 
hundred cars to the New York and New England Rail- 
road — he begins to open his eyes. The South is man- 
ufacturing a great variety of things needed in the 
house, on the farm, and in the shops, for home con- 
sumption, and already sends to the North and West 
several manufactured products. With iron, coal, tim- 
ber contiguous and easily obtained, the amount sent 
out is certain to increase as the labor becomes more 
skilful. The most striking industrial development to- 
day is in iron, coal, lumber, and marbles ; the more 
encouraging for the self-sustaining life of the South- 
ern people is the multiplication of small industries in 
nearly every city I visited. 

When I have been asked what impressed me most 
in this hasty tour, I have always said that the most 
notable thing was that everybody Avas at work. In 
many cities this was literally true: every man, woman, 
and child was actively employed, and in most there 
Avere fewer idlers than in many Northern towns. 
There are, of course, slow places, antiquated methods, 
easy - going ways, a - hundred - years - behind - the - time 
makeshifts, but the spirit in all the centres, and leav- 
ening the whole country, is work. Perhaps the great- 
est revolution of all in Southern sentiment is in re- 
gard to the dignity of labor. Labor is honorable, 
made so by the example of the best in the land. 
There are, no doubt, fossils or Bourbons, sitting in 
the midst of the ruins of their estates, martyrs to an 
ancient pride; but usually the leaders in business and 



The South Revisited. 113 

enterprise bear names well known in politics and so- 
ciety. The nonsense that it is beneath the dignity of 
any man or woman to work for a living is pretty much 
eliminated from the Southern mind. It still remains 
true that the Anglo-Saxon type is prevalent in the 
South; but m all the cities the business sign-boards 
show that the enterprising Hebrew is increasingly 
prominent as merchant and trader, and he is becom- 
ing a plantation owner as well. 

It cannot be too strongly impressed upon the public 
mind that the South, to use a comprehensible phrase, 
"has joined the procession." Its mind is turned to 
the development of its resources, to business, to enter- 
prise, to education, to economic problems ; it is march- 
ing with the North in the same purpose of wealth by 
industry. It is true that the railways, mines, and 
furnaces could not have been without enormous in- 
vestments of Northern capital, but I was continually 
surprised to find so many and important local indus- 
tries the result solely of home capital, made and saved 
since the war. 

In this industrial change, in the growth of manu- 
factures, the Southern people are necessarily divided 
on the national economic problems. Speaking of it 
purely from the side of political economy and not of 
politics, great sections of the South — whole States, in 
fact — are becoming more in favor of "protection" 
every day. All theories aside, whenever a man begins 
to work up the raw material at hand into manufact- 
ured articles for the market, he thinks that the revenue 
should be so adjusted as to help and not to hinder him. 

Underlying everything else is the negro problem. 
It is the most difficult ever given to a people to solve. 
8 



114 South and West. 

It must, under our Constitution, be left to the States 
concerned, and there is a general hopefulness that 
time and patience will solve it to the advantage of 
both races. The negro is generally regarded as the 
best laborer in the world, and there is generally good- 
will towards him, desire that he shall be educated and 
become thrifty. The negro has more confidence now 
than formerly in the white man, and he will go to him 
for aid and advice in everything except politics. 
Again and again colored men said to me, "If anybody 
tells you that any considerable number of colored 
men are Democrats, don't you believe him ; it is not 
so." The philanthropist who goes South will find 
many things to encourage him, but if he knovrs the 
colored people thoroughly, he will lose many illusions. 
But to speak of things hopeful, the progress in educa- 
tion, in industry, in ability to earn money, is extraor- 
dinary — much greater than ought to have been ex- 
pected in twenty years even by their most sanguine 
friends, and it is greater now than at any other period. 
They are generally well paid, according to the class 
of work they do. Usually I found the same wages 
for the same class of work as whites received. I can- 
not say how this is in remote country districts. The 
treatment of laborers depends, I have no doubt, as 
elsewhere, upon the nature of the employer. In some 
districts I heard that the negroes never got out of 
debt, never could lay up anything, and were in a very 
bad condition. But on some plantations certainly, 
and generally in the cities, there is an improvement 
in thrift shown in the ownership of bits of land 
and houses, and in the possession of neat and pret- 
ty homes. As to morals, the gain is slower, but it is 



The South Bevisited, 115 

discernible, and exhibited in a growing public opinion 
against immorality and lax family relations. He is 
no friend to the colored people who blinks this sub- 
ject, and does not plainly say to them that their posi- 
tion as citizens in the enjoyment of all civil rights 
depends quite as much upon their personal virtue and 
their acquiring habits of thrift as it does upon school 
privileges. 

I had many interesting talks with representative 
colored men in different sections. While it is un- 
doubtedly true that more are indifferent to politics 
than formerly, owing to causes already named and to 
the unfulfilled promises of wheedling politicians, it 
would be untrue to say that there is not great sore- 
ness over the present situation. At Nashville I had 
an interview with eight or ten of the best colored 
citizens, men of all shades of color. One of them 
was a trusted clerk in the post-office; another was a 
mail agent, who had saved money, and made more by 
an investment in Birmingham ; another was a lawyer 
of good practice in the courts, a man of decided re- 
finement and cultivation ; another was at the head of 
one of the leading transportation lines in the city, and 
another had the largest provision establishment in 
town, and both were men of considerable property ; 
and another, a slave when the war ended, was a large 
furniture dealer, and reputed w^orth a hundred thou- 
sand dollars. They were all solid, sensible business 
men, and all respected as citizens. They talked most 
intelligently of politics, and freely about social condi- 
tions. In regard to voting in Tennessee there was 
little to complain of ; but in regard to Mississippi, as 
an illustration, it was an outrage that the dominant 



116 South and West. 

party had increased power in Congress and in the 
election of President, while the colored Republican 
vote did not count. What could they do? Some 
said that probably nothing could be done ; time must 
be left to cure the wrong. Others wanted the Fed- 
eral Government to interfere, at least to the extent of 
making a test case on some member of Congress that 
his election was illegal. They did not think that 
need excite anew any race prejudice. As to exciting 
race and sectional agitation, we discussed this ques- 
tion : whether the present marvellous improvement 
of the colored people, with general good-will, or at 
least a truce everj^where, would not be hindered by 
anything like a race or class agitation ; that is to say, 
whether under the present conditions of education 
and thrift the colored people (whatever injustice they 
felt) were not going on faster towards the realization 
of all they wanted than would be possible under any 
circumstances of adverse agitation. As a matter of 
policy most of them assented to this. I put this ques- 
tion : " In the first reconstruction days, how many 
colored men were there in the State of Mississippi 
fitted either by knowledge of letters, law, political 
economy, history, or politics to make laws for the 
State?" Very few. Well, then, it was unfortunate 
that they should have attempted it. There are more 
to-day, and with education and the accumulation of 
property the number will constantly increase. In a 
republic, power usually goes with intelligence and 
property. 

Finally I asked this intelligent company, every 
man of which stood upon his own ability in perfect 
self-respect, " What do you want here in the way of 



The South Revisited. 117 

civil rights that you have not ?" The reply from one 
was that he got the respect of the whites just as he 
was able to command it by his ability and by making 
money, and, with a touch of a sense of injustice, he 
said he had ceased to expect that the colored race 
would get it in any other way. Another reply was — 
and this was evidently the deep feeling of all : " We 
want to be treated like men, like anybody else, regard- 
less of color. We don't mean by this social equality 
at all; that is a matter that regulates itself among 
whites and colored people everywhere. We want the 
public conveyances open to us according to the fare we 
pay ; we want privilege to go to hotels and to theatres, 
operas and places of amusement. We wish you could 
see our families and the way we live ; you would then 
understand that we cannot go to the places assigned 
us in concerts and theatres without loss of self-re- 
spect." I might have said, but I did not, that the 
question raised by this last observation is not a local 
one, but as wide as the world. 

If I tried to put in a single sentence the most wide- 
spread and active sentiment in the South to-day, it 
would be this : The past is put behind us ; we are 
one with the North in business and national ambi- 
tion : we want a sympathetic recognition of this fact. 



VII. 
A FAR AND FAIR COUNTRY. 

Lewis and Clarke, sent out by Mr. Jefferson in 1804 
to discover the North-west by the route of the Mis- 
souri River, left the town of St. Charles early in the 
spring, sailed and poled and dragged their boats up 
the swift, turbulent, and treacherous stream all sum- 
mer, wintered with the Mandan Indians, and reached 
the Great Falls of the Missouri in about a year and a 
quarter from the beginning of their voyage. Now, 
when we wish to rediscover this interesting country, 
which is still virgin land, we lay down a railway-track 
in the spring and summer, and go over there in the 
autumn in a palace-car — a much more expeditious and 
comfortable mode of exploration. 

In beginning a series of observations and comments 
upon Western life it is proper to say that the reader 
is not to expect exhaustive statistical statements of 
growth or development, nor descriptions, except such 
as will illustrate the point of view taken of the mak- 
ing of the Great West. Materialism is the most ob- 
trusive feature of a cursory observation, but it does 
not interest one so much as the forces that underlie 
it, the enterprise and the joyousness of conquest and 
achievement that it stands for, or the finer processes 
evolved in the marvellous building up of new societies. 
What is the spirit, what is the civilization of the 
West ? I have not the presumption to expect to an- 



A Far and Fair Coimtry. 119 

swer these large questions to any one's satisfaction — 
least of all to my own — but if I may be permitted to 
talk about them familiarly, in the manner that one 
speaks to his friends of what interested him most in a 
journey, and with flexibility in passing from one topic 
to another, I shall hope to contribute something to a 
better understanding between the territories of a vast 
empire. How vast this repul)lic is, no one can at all 
aj^preciatc who does not actually travel over its wide 
areas. To many of us the AVest is still the West of 
the geographies of thirty years ago ; it is the simple 
truth to say that comparatively few Eastern people 
have any adequate conception of what lies west of 
Chicago and St. Louis : perhaps a hazy geographical 
notion of it, but not the faintest idea of its civilization 
and society. Now, a good understanding of each oth- 
er between the great sections of the republic is politi- 
cally of the first importance. We shall hang together 
as a nation ; blood, relationship, steel rails, navigable 
waters, trade, absence of natural boundaries, settle 
that. We shall pull and push and grumble, we shall 
vituperate each other, parties will continue to make 
capital out of sectional prejudice, and wantonly in- 
flame it (what a pitiful sort of " politics " that is!), 
but we shall stick together like wax. Still, anything 
like smooth working of our political machine depends 
upon good understanding between sections. And the 
remark applies to East and West as well as to North 
and South. It is a common remark at the West that 
" Eastern people know nothing about us ; they think 
us half civilized ;" and there is mingled with slight 
irritability at this ignorance a waxing feeling of supe- 
riority over the East in force and power. One would 



120 South and West 

not say that repose as yet goes along with this sense 
of great capacity and great achievement ; indeed, it 
is inevitable that in a condition of development and 
of quick growth unj^aralleled in the history of the 
world there should be abundant self-assertion and 
even monumental boastfulness. 

When the "Western man goes East he carries the 
consciousness of playing a great part in the making 
of an empire ; his horizon is large ; but he finds him- 
self surrounded by an atmosphere of indifference or 
non-comprehension of the j^rodigiousness of his coun- 
try, of incredulity as to the refinement and luxury of 
his civilization ; and self-assertion is his natural de- 
fence. This longitudinal incredulity and swagger is 
a curious phenomenon. London thinks New York 
puts on airs, New York complains of Chicago's want 
of modesty, Chicago can see that Kansas City and 
Omaha are aggressively boastful, and these cities ac- 
knowledge the expansive self-appreciation of Denver 
and Helena. 

Does going West work a radical difference in a 
man's character? Hardly. We are all cut out of 
the same piece of cloth. The Western man is the 
Eastern or the Southern man let loose, with his lead- 
ing-strings cut. But the change of situation creates 
immense diversity in interests and in spirit. One has 
but to take up any of the great newspapers, say in St. 
Paul or Minneapolis, to be aware that he is in another 
world of ideas, of news, of interests. The topics that 
most interest the East he does not find there, nor much 
of its news. Persons of whom he reads daily in the 
East drop out of sight, and other persons, magnates 
in politics, packing, railways, loom up. It takes col- 



A Far and Fair Country. 121 

umns to tell the daily history of places which have 
heretofore only caught the attention of the Eastern 
reader for freaks of the thermometer, and he has an 
opportunity to read daily pages about Dakota, con- 
cerning which a weekly paragraph has formerly satis- 
fied his curiosity. Before he can be absorbed in these 
lively and intelligent newspapers he must change the 
whole current of his thoughts, and take up other sub- 
jects, persons, and places than those that have occu- 
pied his mind. He is in a new world. 

One of the most striking facts in the West is State 
pride, attachment to the State, the profound belief of 
every citizen that his State is the best. Engendered 
perhaps at first by a permanent investment and the 
spur of self-interest, it speedily becomes a passion, as 
strong in the newest State as it is in any one of the 
original thirteen. Rivalry between cities is sharp, 
and civic pride is excessive, but both are outdone by 
the larger devotion, to the commonwealth. And this 
pride is developed in the inhabitants of a Territory as 
soon as it is organized. Montana has condensed the 
ordinary achievements of a century into twenty years, 
and loyalty to its present and expectation of its future 
are as strong in its citizens as is the attachment of 
men of Massachusetts to the State of nearly three 
centuries of growth. In Nebraska I was pleased with 
the talk of a clergyman who had just returned from 
three months' travel in Europe. He was full of his 
novel experiences ; he had greatly enjoyed the trip ; 
but he was glad to get back to Nebraska and its full, 
vigorous life. In England and on the Continent he 
had seen much to interest him ; but he could not help 
comparing Europe with Nebraska ; and as for him, 



122 South and West. 

this was the substance of it : give him Nebraska ev- 
ery time. What astonished him most, and wounded 
his feelings (and there was a note of pathos in his 
statement of it), was the general foreign ignorance 
abroad about Nebraska — the utter failure in the Eu- 
ropean mind to take it in. I felt guilty, for to me it 
had been little more than a geographical expression, 
and I presume the Continent did not know Avhether 
Nebraska was a new kind of patent medicine or a 
new sort of religion. To the clergymen this igno- 
rance of the central, richest, about-to-be-the-most-im- 
portant of States, was simply incredible. 

This feeling is not only admirable in itself, but it 
has an incalculable political value, especially in the 
West, where there is a little haze as to the limita- 
tions of Federal power, and a notion that the Consti- 
tution was swaddling-clothes for an infant, which 
manly limbs may need to kick off. Healthy and 
even assertive State pride is the only possible coun- 
terbalance in our system against that centralization 
which tends to corruption in the centre and weakness 
and discontent in the individual members. 

It should be added that the West, speaking of it 
generally, is defiantly "American." It wants a more 
vigorous and assertive foreign policy. Conscious of 
its power, the growing pains in the limbs of the young 
giant will not let it rest. That this is the most mag- 
nificent country, that we have the only government 
beyond criticism, that our civilization is far and away 
the best, does not admit of doubt. It is refreshing to 
see men who believe in something heartily and with- 
out reserve, even if it is only in themselves. There is 
a tonic in this challenge of all time and history. A 



A Far and Fair Country. 123 

certain attitude of American assertion towards other 
powers is desired. For want of this our late repre- 
sentatives to Great Britain are said to be un-Amer- 
ican ; ''political dudes" is what the Governor of Iowa 
calls them. It is his indictment against the present 
Minister to St. James that " he is numerous in his vis- 
its to the castles of English noblemen, and profuse in 
his obsequiousness to British aristocrats." And per- 
haps the Governor speaks for a majority of Western 
voters and fighters when he says that " timidity has 
characterized our State Department for the last twen- 
ty years." 

By chance I begin these Western studies with the 
North-v/est. Passing by for the present the intelli- 
gent and progressive State of Wisconsin, we will con- 
sider Minnesota and the vast region at present more 
or less tributary to it. It is necessary to remember 
that the State was admitted to the Union in 1858, and 
that its extraordinary industrial development dates 
from the building of the first railway in its limits — 
ten miles from St. Paul to St. Anthony — in 1802. For 
this road the first stake was driven and the first 
shovelful of earth lifted by a citizen of St. Paul who 
has lived to see his State gridironed with railways, 
and whose firm constructed in 1887 over eleven hun- 
dred miles of railroad. 

It is unnecessary to dwell upon the familiar facts 
that Minnesota is a great wheat State, and that it is 
intersected by railways that stimulate the enormous 
yield and market it with facility. The discovery that 
the State, especially the Red River Valley, and Da- 
kota and the country beyond, were peculiarly adapted 
to the production of hard spring-wheat, which is the 



124 South and West. 

most desirable for flour, probably gave this vast re- 
gion its first immense advantage. Minnesota, a prairie 
country, rolling, but with no important hills, well wa- 
tered, well grassed, with a repellent reputation for se- 
vere winters, not well adapted to corn, nor friendly to 
most fruits, attracted nevertheless hardy and advent- 
urous people, and proved specially inviting to the 
Scandinavians, who are tough and industrious. It 
would grow wheat without end. And wheat is the 
easiest crop to raise, and returns the greatest income 
for the least labor» In good seasons and with good 
prices it is a mine of wealth. But Minnesota had to 
learn that one industry does not suflice to make a 
State, and that wheat-raising alone is not only unre- 
liable, but exhaustive. The grasshopper scourge was 
no doubt a blessing in disguise. It helped to turn 
the attention of farmers to cattle and sheep, and to 
more varied agriculture. I shall have more to say 
about this in connection with certain most interesting 
movements in Wisconsin. 

The notion has prevailed that the North-west was 
being absorbed by owners of immense tracts of land, 
great capitalists who by the aid of machinery Avere 
monopolizing the production of wheat, and crowding 
out small farmers. There are still vast wheat farms 
under one control, but I am happy to believe that the 
danger of this great land monopoly has reached its 
height, and the tendency is the other way. Small 
farms are on the increase, practising a more varied 
agriculture. The reason is this : A plantation of 
5000 or 15,000 acres, with a good season, freedom 
from blight and insects, will enrich the owner if prices 
are good ; but one poor crop, with low prices, will 



A Far and Fair Country, 125 

bankrupt him. Whereas the small farmer can get a 
living under the most adverse circumstances, and tak- 
ing one year with another, accumulate something, es- 
pecially if he varies his products and feeds them to 
stock, thus returning the richness of his farm to itself. 
The skinning of the land by sending away its sub- 
stance in hard wheat is an improvidence of natural 
resources, which belongs, like cattle-ranging, to a half- 
civilized era, and like cattle-ranging has probably seen 
its best days. One incident illustrates what can be 
done. Mr. James J. Hill, the president of the Mani- 
toba railway system, an importer and breeder of fine 
cattle on his Minnesota country place, recently gave 
and loaned a number of blooded bulls to farmers over 
a wide area in Minnesota and Dakota. The result of 
this benefaction has been surprising in adding to the 
wealth of those regions and the prosperity of the 
farmers. It is the beginning of a varied farming and 
of cattle production, which will be of incalculable 
benefit to the Xorth-west. 

It is in the memory of men still in active life when 
the Territory of Minnesota was supposed to be be- 
yond the pale of desirable settlement. The State, ex- 
cept in the north-east portion, is now well settled, and 
well sprinkled with thriving villages and cities. Of 
the latter, St. Paul and Minneapolis are still a wonder 
to themselves, as they are to the world. I knew that 
they were big cities, having each a population nearly 
approaching 175,000, but I was not prepared to find 
them so handsome and substantial, and exhibiting 
such vigor and activity of movement. One of the 
most impressive things to an Eastern man in both of 
them is their public spirit, and the harmony with 



126 South and West. 

which business men work together for anything which 
will build up and beautify the city. I believe that 
the ruling force in Minneapolis is of Xew England 
stock, while St. Paul has a larger proportion of Xew 
York people, with a mixture of Southern ; and I have 
a fancy that there is a social shading that shows this 
distinction. It is worth noting, however, that the 
Southerner, transplanted to Minnesota or Montana, 
loses the laisser faire with which he is credited at 
horn?, and becomes as active and pushing as anybody. 
Both cities have a very large Scandinavian population. 
The laborers and the domestic servants are mostly 
Swedes. In forecasting what sort of a State Minne- 
sota is to be, the Scandinavian is a largely determin- 
ing force. It is a virile element. The traveller is 
impressed with the idea that the women whom he 
sees at the stations in the country and in the city 
streets are sturdy, ruddy, and better able to endure 
the protracted season of cold and the highly stimu- 
lating atmosphere than the American-born women, 
who tend to become nervous in these climatic condi- 
tions. The Swedes are thrifty, taking eagerly to 
politics, and as ready to profit by them as anybody ; 
unreservedly American in intention, and on the whole, 
good citizens. 

The physical difference of the two cities is mainly 
one of situation. Minneapolis spreads out on both 
sides of the Mississippi over a plain, from the gigantic 
flouring-mills and the canal and the Falls of St. An- 
thony as a centre (the falls being, by-the-way, planked 
over with a wooden apron to prevent the total wear- 
ing away of the shaly rock) to rolling land and beau- 
tiful buildinc: sites on moderate elevations. Nature 



A Far and Fair Country. 127 

has surrounded the city with a lovely country, diversi- 
lied by lakes and forests, and enterprise has developed 
it into one of the most inviting of summer regions. 
Twelve miles west of it, Lake Minnetonka, naturally 
surj^assingly lovely, has become, by an immense ex- 
penditure of money, perhaps the most attractive sum- 
mer resort in the Xorth-west. Each city has a hotel 
(the West in 3Iinneapolis, the Ryan in St. Paul) which 
would be distinguished monuments of cost and ele- 
gance in any city in the world, and each city has 
blocks of business houses, shops, and offices of solidity 
and architectural beauty, and each has many private 
residences which are palaces in size, in solidity, and 
interior embellishment, but they are scattered over 
the city in Minneapolis, which can boast of no single 
street equal to Summit Avenue in St. Paul. The most 
conspicuous of the private houses is the stone mansion 
of Governor AVashburn, pleasing in color, harmonious 
in design, but so gigantic that the visitor (who may 
have seen palaces abroad) expects to find a somewhat 
vacant interior. He is therefore surprised that the 
predominating note is homelikeness and comfort, and 
he does not see how a family of moderate size could 
well get along with less than the seventy rooms (most 
of them large) which they have at their disj^osal. 

St. Paul has the advantage of picturesqueness of 
situation. The business part of the town lies on a 
spacious uneven elevation above the river, surrounded 
by a semicircle of bluffs averaging something like two 
hundred feet high. Up the sides of these the city 
climbs, beautifying every vantage-ground with hand- 
some and stately residences. On the north the bluffs 
maintain their elevation in a splendid plateau, and 



1:2S South ajid West 

over this dry and healthful plam the t\yo cities advance 
to meet each other, and already meet in suburbs, col- 
leges, and various public buildings. Summit Avenue 
curves along the line of the northern blutT. and then 
turns northward, two hundred feet broad, graded a 
distance of over two miles, and with a magnificent 
asphalt road-way for more than a mile. It is almost 
literally a street of palaces, for although wooden struct- 
ures alternate with the varied and architecturally in- 
teresting mansions of stone aiid brick on both sides, 
each house is isolated, with a handsome lawn and orna- 
mental trees, and the total effect is spacious and noble. 
This avenue commands an almost unequalled view of 
the sweep of bluffs round to the Indian Mounds, of 
the city, the winding river, and the town and heights 
of West St. Paul. It is not easy to recall a street and 
view anywhere finer than this, and this is only one of 
the streets on this plateau conspicuous for handsome 
houses. I see no reason why St. Paul should not be- 
come, within a few years, one of the notably most 
beautiful cities in the world. And it is now wonder- 
fully well advanced in that direction. Of course the 
reader understands that both these rapidly growing 
cities are in the process of '* making,'\ind that means 
cutting and digging and slashing, torn-up streets, 
shabby structures alternating with gigantic and solid 
buildings, and the usual unsightliness of transition and 
growth. 

Minneapolis has the State University, St. Paul the 
Capitol, an ordinary building of brick, which will not 
long, it is safe to say, suit the neeils of the pride of 
the State. I do not set out to describe the city, the 
churches, big newspaper buildings, great wholesale 



^1 Far and Fair Country, 129 

and ware houses, handsome eliib-hoiise [X\\o Minnesota 
Chib). stately City Hall, banks, Chamber of Commeree, 
and so on. I was impressed with the size of the buiUl- 
ings needed to h.ouse the g-reat railway otllees. Noth- 
ing ean give one a livelier idea of the growth and 
grasp of Western business than one of these plain 
strueturos, live or six stories high, devoted to the sev- 
eral departments of one road or system of roads, 
crowded with busy otfioials and clerks, otlices of the 
president, vice-president, assistant of the president, 
secretary, treasurer, engineer, general n\anager, gen- 
eral superintendent, general freight, general tratfic, 
general passenger, perhaps a land oilieer, and so on — 
affairs as complicated and vast in organization and ex- 
tensive in detail as those of a State government. 

There are sixteen railways which run in Minnesota, 
having a total mileage of 5024 miles in the State. 
Those which have over tvro hundred miles of road in 
the State are the Chicago and Xorth-western, Chicago, 
Milwaukee, and St. Paul, Chicago, St. Paul, ^linneapo- 
lis. and Omaha, Minneapolis and St. Louis, Xorthcrn 
Pacitic, St. Paul and Duluth, and the St. Paul, Minne- 
apolis, and ^Manitoba. The names of these roads give 
little indication of their location, as the reader knows, 
for many of them run all over the North-west like 
spider-webs. 

It goes without saying that the management of 
these great interests — imperial, almost continental in 
scope — ivquires brains, sobriety, integrity ; and one is 
not surprised to tind that the milways command and 
pay liberally for the highest talent and skill. It is 
not merely a matter of laying rails and running trains, 
but of developing the resources — one might almost say 
9 



130 South and West. 

creating the industries — of vast territories. These 
are gigantic interests, concerning which there is such 
sharp rivahy and competition, and as a rule it is the 
generous, large-minded policy that wins. Somebody- 
has said that the railway managers and magnates (I 
do not mean those who deal in railways for the sake 
of gambling) are the elite of AYestern life. I am not 
drawing distinctions of this sort, but I will say, and 
it might as well be said here and simply, that next to 
the impression I got of the powerful hand of the rail- 
ways in the making of the West, was that of the high 
character, the moral stamina, the ability, the devotion 
to something outside themselves, of the railway men 
I met in the North-west. Specialists many of them 
are, and absorbed in special work, but I doubt if any 
other profession or occupation can show a proportion- 
ally larger number of broad-minded, fair-minded men, 
of higher integrity and less pettiness, or more inclined 
to the liberalizing culture in art and social life. Ei- 
ther dealing Avith large concerns has lifted up the 
men, or the large opportunities have attracted men of 
high talent and character; and I sincerely believe that 
we should have no occasion for anxiety if the average 
community did not go below the standard of railway 
morality and honorable dealing. 

What is the raison d''etre of these two phenomenal 
cities ? why do they grow ? why are they likely to 
continue to grow ? I confess that this was an enigma 
to me until I had looked beyond to see what country 
was tributary to them, what a territory they have to 
supply. Of course, the railways, the flouring - mills, 
the vast w^holesale dry goods and grocery houses speak 
for themselves. But I had thought of these cities as 



A Far and Fair Country. 131 

on the confines of civilization. They are, however, 
the two posts of the gate-way to an empire. In order 
to comprehend their future, I made some little trips 
north-east and north-west. 

Duluth, though as yet with only about twenty-five 
to thirty thousand inhabitants, feels itself, by its posi- 
tion, a rival of the cities on the Mississippi. A few 
figures show the basis of this feeling. In 1880 the 
population was 3740 ; in 1886, 25,000. In 1880 the 
receipts of wheat were 1,347,679 bushels; in 1886, 
22,425,730 bushels ; in 1880 the shipments of wheat 
1,453,647 bushels; in 1886, 17,981,965 bushels. In 1880 
the shipments of flour were 551,800 bushels ; in 1886, 
1,500,000 bushels. In 1886 there were grain elevators 
with a capacity of 18,000,000 bushels. The tax valu- 
ation had increased from $669,012 in 1880 to $11,773,- 
729 in 1886. The following comparisons are made : 
The receipt of wheat in Chicago in 1885 was 19,266,- 
000 bushels ; in Duluth, 14,880,000 bushels. The re- 
ceipt of wheat in 1886 was at Duluth 22,425,730 bush- 
els; at Minneapolis, 33,394,450; at Chicago, 15,982,524; 
at Milwaukee, 7,930,102. This shows that an increas- 
ing amount of the great volume of wheat raised in 
north Dakota and north-west Minnesota (that is, large- 
ly in the Red River Yalley) is seeking market by way 
of Duluth and water transportation. In 1869 Min- 
nesota raised about 18,000,000 bushels of wheat; in 
1886, about 50,000,000. In 1869 Dakota grew no 
grain at all; in 1886 it produced about 50,000,000 
bushels of wheat. To understand the amount of 
transportation the reader has only to look on the map 
and see the railway lines — the Northern Pacific, the 
Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Omaha, the St. 



132 South and West. 

Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba, and other lines, run- 
ning to Duluth, and sending out spurs, like the roots 
of an elm-tree, into the wheat lands of the North-west. 

Most of the route from St. Paul to Duluth is unin- 
teresting ; there is nothing picturesque except the 
Dalles of the St. Louis River, and a good deal of the 
country passed through seems, agriculturally of no 
value. The approaches to Duluth, both from the 
Wisconsin and the Minnesota side, are rough and 
vexatious by reason of broken, low, hummocky, and 
swamp land. Duluth itself, with good harbor facili- 
ties, has only a strip of level ground for a street, and 
inadequate room for railway tracks and transfers. 
The town itself climbs up the hill, whence there is a 
good view of the lake and the Wisconsin shore, and a 
fair chance for both summer and winter breezes. The 
residence portion of the town, mainly small wooden 
houses, has many highly ornamental dwellings, and 
the long street below, following the shore, has many 
noble buildings of stone and brick, which would be a 
credit to any city. Grading and sewer-making render 
a large number of the streets impassable, and add to 
the signs of push, growth, and business excitement. 

For the purposes of trade, Duluth, and the towns of 
Superior and West Superior, in Wisconsin, may be 
considered one port ; and while Duluth may continue 
to be the money and business centre, the expansion 
for railway terminal facilities, elevators, and manu- 
factures is likely to be in the Wisconsin towns on the 
south side of the harbor. From the Great Northern 
Elevator in West Superior the view of the other ele- 
vators, of the immense dock room, of the harbor and 
lake, of a net-work of miles and miles of terminal 



A Far and Fair Country. 133 

tracks of the various roads, gives one an idea of gigan- 
tic commerce ; and the long freight trains laden with 
wheat, glutting all the roads and sidings approaching 
Duluth, speak of the bursting abundance of the trib- 
utary country. This Great Northern Elevator, be- 
longing to the Manitoba system, is the largest in the 
world; its dimensions are 360 feet long, 95 in width, 
115 in height, with a capacity of 1,800,000 bushels, 
and with facilities for handling 40 car-loads an hour, 
or 400 cars in a day of 10 hours. As I am merely il- 
lustrating the amount of the present great staple of 
the IN'orth-west, I say nothing here of the mineral, 
stone, and lumber business of this region. Duluth 
has a cool, salubrious summer and a snug winter cli- 
mate. I ought to add that the enterprising inhabi- 
tants attend to education as well as the elevation of 
grain ; the city has eight commodious school build- 
ings. 

To return to the Mississippi. To understand what 
feeds Minneapolis and St. Paul, and what country 
their great wholesale houses supply, one must take 
the rail and penetrate the vast North-west. The fa- 
mous Park or Lake district, between St. Cloud {V5 
miles north-west of St. Paul) and Fergus Falls, is too 
well known to need description. A rolling prairie, 
with hundreds of small lakes, tree fringed, it is a re- 
gion of surpassing loveliness, and already dotted, as 
at Alexandria, with summer resorts. The whole re- 
gion, up as far as Moorhead (240 miles from St. Paul), 
on the Red River, opposite Fargo, Dakota, is well set- 
tled, and full of prosperous towns. At Fargo, cross- 
ing the Northern Pacific, we ran parallel with the Red 
River, through a line of bursting elevators and wheat 



13^ South and Wtst. 

farms, down to Grand Forks, where Ave turned west- 
ward, and passed out of the Red Kiver Valley, rising 
to the plateau at Larimore, some three hundred feet 
above it. 

The Red River, a narrow but deep and navigable 
stream, has from its source to Lake Winnipeg a tort- 
uous course of about 600 miles, while the valley itself 
is about -Sd miles long, of which ISO miles is in the 
United States. This valley, which lias astonished the 
world by its wheat production, is about 100 miles in 
breadth, and level as a tloor, except that it has a 
northward slope of, I believe, about live feet to the 
mile. The river forms the boundary between Minne- 
sota and Dakota ; the width of valley on the Dakota 
side varies from 50 to 100 miles. The rich soil is 
from two to three feet deep, underlaid with clay. 
Fargo, the centre of this valley, is iUO feet above the 
sea. The climate is one of extremes between winter 
and summer, but of much constancy of cold or heat 
according to the season. Although it is undeniable 
that one does not feel the severe cold there as much 
as in more humid atmospheres, it cannot be doubted 
that the long continuance of extreme cold is trying to 
the system. And it may be said of all the Xorth-wcst, 
including Minnesota, that while it is more favorable 
to the lungs than many regions where the thermometer 
has less sinking power, it is not free from catarrh (the 
curse of Xew England), nor from rheumatism. The 
climate seems to me specially stimulating, and I 
should say there is less excuse here for the use of 
stimulants (on account of "lowness" or lassitude) 
than in almost any other portion of the United States 
with which I am acquainted. 



A Kw a^id Fan* dnoitt'i/. 135 

But whatever attractions or drawbacks this terri- 
tory has as a place of residence, its grain and stock 
growing capacity is inexhaustible, and having seen it, 
we begin to comprehend the vigorous activity and 
growth of the twin cities. And yet this is the begin- 
ning of resources ; there lies Dakota, with its 140,100 
square miles (90,o00,4S0 acres of land), larger than 
all the New England States and Xew York combined, 
and ^Montana beyond, togothor making a bolt of hard 
spring-wheat land suthcient, one would think, to feed 
the world. When one travels over TJOO miles of it, 
doubt ceases. 

I cannot better illustrate the resources and enter- 
prise of the North-west than by speaking in some de- 
tail of the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba Kail- 
way (known as the Manitoba system), and by telling 
briefly the story of one season's work, not because 
this system is bigger or more enterprising or of more 
importance in the AVest than some others I might 
name, but because it has lately pierced a compara- 
tively unknown region, and opened to settlement a 
fertile empire. 

The Manitoba system gridirons north 3Iinnesota, 
runs to Duluth, puts two tracks down the Red Kivor 
Valley (one on each side of the river) to the Canada 
line, sends out various spurs into Dakota, and ojHu-ates 
a main line from Grand Forks westward through the 
whole of Dakota, and through Montana as far as the 
Great Falls of the Missouri, and thence through the 
canon of the Missouri and the canon of the Prickly- 
Pear to Helena — in all about 3000 miles of track. Its 
president is Mr. James J. llill, a Canadian by birth, 
whose rapid career from that of a clerk on the St. 



136 South and West. 

Paul levee to his present position of influence, oj^por- 
tunity, and wealth is a romance in itself, and whose 
character, integrity, tastes, and accomplishments, and 
domestic life, were it proper to speak of them, would 
satisfactorily answer many of the questions that are 
asked about the materialistic West. 

The Manitoba line west had reached Minot, 530 
miles from St. Paul, in 1886. I shall speak of its ex- 
tension in 1887, which was intrusted to Mr. D. C. 
Shepard, a veteran engineer and railway builder of 
St. Paul, and his firm, Messrs. Shepard, Winston & 
Co. Credit should be given by name to the men who 
conducted this Napoleonic enterprise ; for it required 
not only the advance of millions of money, but the 
foresight, energy, vigilance, and capacity that insure 
success in a distant military campaign. 

It needs to be noted that the continuation of the 
St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba road from Great 
Falls to Helena, 98 miles, is called the Montana Cen- 
tral. The work to be accomplished in 1887 was to 
grade 500 miles of railroad to reach Great Falls, to 
put in the bridging and mechanical structures (by 
hauling all material brought up by rail ahead of the 
track by teams, so as not to delay the progress of the 
track) on 530 miles of continuous railway, and to lay 
and put in good running condition 643 miles of rails 
continuously and from one end only. 

In the winter of 1886-87 the road was completed 
to a point five miles west of Minot, and work was 
done beyond which if consolidated would amount to 
about fifty miles of completed grading, and the me- 
chanical structures were done for twenty miles west 
from Minot. On the Montana Central the grading 



A Far and Fair Country. 137 

and mechanical structures were made from Helena 
as a base, and completed before the track reached 
Great Falls. St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Dulutli were 
the primary bases of operations, and generally speak- 
ing all materials, labor, fuel, and supplies originated 
at these three points ; Minot was the secondary base, 
and here in the winter of 1886-87 large depots of sup- 
plies and materials for construction were formed. 

Track-laying began April 2, 1887, but was greatly 
retarded by snow and ice in the completed cuts, and 
by the grading, which was heavy. The cuts were 
frozen more or less up to May 15th. The forwarding 
of grading forces to Minot began April 6th, but it 
was a labor of considerable magnitude to outfit them 
at Minot and get them forward to the work ; so that 
it was as late as May 10th before the entire force was 
under employment. 

The average force on the grading was 3300 teams 
and about 8000 men. Upon the track-laying, surfac- 
ing, piling, and timber-work there were 225 teams 
and about 650 men. The heaviest work was en- 
countered on the eastern end, so that the track was 
close upon the grading up to the 10th of June. Some 
of the cuttings and embankments were heavy. After 
the 10th of June progress upon the grading was very 
rapid. From the mouth of Milk River to Great Falls 
(a distance of 200 miles) grading was done at an 
average rate of seven miles a day. Those who saw 
this army of men and teams stretching over the 
prairie and casting up this continental highway think 
they beheld one of the most striking achievements of 
civilization. 

I may mention that the track is all cast up (even 



13 S South and West. 

where the grading is easy) to such a height as to re- 
lieve it of drifting snow ; and to give some idea of 
the character of the work, it is noted that in preparing 
it there were moved 9,700,000 cubic yards of earth, 
15,000 cubic yards of loose rock, and 17,500 cubic 
yards of solid rock, and that there were hauled ahead 
of the track and put in the work to such distance as 
would not obstruct the track - laying (in some in- 
stances 30 miles), 9,000,000 feet (board measure) of 
timber and 390,000 lineal feet of piling. 

On the 5th of August the grading of the entire line 
to Great Falls was either finished or properly manned 
for its completion the first day of September, and on 
the 10th of August it became necessary to remove 
outfits to the east as they completed their work, and 
about 2500 teams and their quota of men were with- 
drawn between the 10th and 20th of August, and 
placed upon work elsewhere. 

The record of track laid is as follows : April 2d to 
30th, 30 miles; May, 82 miles; June, 79.8 miles; July, 
100.8 miles; August, 115.4 miles; September, 102.4 
miles; up to October 15th to Great Falls, 34.6 miles 
— a total to Great Falls of 545 miles. October 16th 
being Sunday, no track was laid. The track started 
from Great Falls Monday, October 17th, and reached 
Helena on Friday, November 18th, a distance of 98 
miles, making a grand total of 643 miles, and an aver- 
af^e rate for every working-day of three and one- 
quarter miles. It will thus be seen that laying a 
good road was a much more expeditious method of 
reaching the Great Falls of the Missouri than that 
adopted by Lewis and Clarke. 

Some of the details of this construction and track- 



A Far and Fair Country. 139 

laying will interest railroad men. On the 16tli of July 
7 miles and 1040 feet of track were laid, and on the 
8th of August 8 miles and 60 feet were laid, in each 
instance by daylight, and by the regular gang of 
track-layers, without any increase of their numbers 
whatever. The entire work was done by handling 
the iron on low iron cars, and depositing it on the 
track from the car at the front end. The method 
pursued was the same as when one mile of track is 
laid per day in the ordinary manner. The force of 
track-layers was maintained at the proper number for 
the ordinary daily work, and was never increased to 
obtain any special result. The result on the 11th of 
August was probably decreased by a quarter to a half 
mile by the breaking of an axle of an iron car while 
going to the front with its load at about 4 p.m. From 
six to eight iron cars were employed in doing this day's 
work. The number ordinaril}^ used was four to five. 
Sidings were graded at intervals of seven to eight 
miles, and spur tracks, laid on the natural surface, 
put in at convenient points, sixteen miles apart, for 
storage of materials and supplies at or near the front. 
As the work went on, the spur tracks in the rear were 
taken up. The construction train contained box cars 
two and three stories high, in which workmen were 
boarded and lodged. Supplies, as a rule, were taken 
by wagon-trains from the spur tracks near the front 
to their destination, an average distance of one hun- 
dred miles and an extreme one of two hundred miles. 
Steamboats were employed to a limited extent on the 
Missouri River in supplying such remote points as 
Fort Benton and the Coal Banks, but not more than 
fifteen per cent, of the transportation was done by 



140 South and West. 

steamers. A single item illustrating the magnitude 
of the supply transportation is that there were shipped 
to Minot and forwarded and consumed on the work 
590,000 bushels of oats. 

It is believed that the work of grading 500 miles of 
railroad in five months, and the transportation into the 
country of everything consumed, grass and water ex- 
cepted, and of every rail, tie, bit of timber, pile, tool, 
machine, man, or team employed, and laying 643 miles 
of track in seven and a half months, from one end, 
far exceeds in magnitude and rapidity of execution 
any similar undertaking in this or any other country. 
It reflects also the greatest credit on the managers of 
the railway transportation (it is not invidious to men- 
tion the names of Mr. A. Manvel, general manager, and 
Mr. J. M. Egan, general superintendent, upon whom 
the working details devolved) when it is stated that 
the delays for material or supplies on the entire work 
did not retard it in the aggregate one hour. And 
every hour counted in this masterly campaign. 

The Western people apparently think no more of 
throwing down a railroad, if they want to go any- 
where, than a conservative Easterner does of taking 
an unaccustomed walk across country; and the rail- 
way constructors and managers are a little amused at 
the Eastern slowness and want of facility in construc- 
tion and management. One hears that the East is an- 
tiquated, and does not know anything about railroad 
building. Shovels, carts, and wheelbarrows are of a 
past age ; the big wheel-scraper does the business. It 
is a common remark that a contractor accustomed to 
Eastern work is not desired on a Western job. 

On Friday afternoon, November 18th, the news was 



A Far and Fair Country. 141 

flashed that the last rail was laid, and at 6 p.m. a spe- 
cial train was on the way from St. Paul with a double 
complement of engineers and train-men. For the first 
600 miles there was more or less delay in avoiding the 
long and frequent freight trains, but after that not 
much except the necessary stops for cleaning the en- 
gine. Great Falls, about 1100 miles, was reached Sun- 
day noon, in thirty-six hours, an average of over 
thirty miles an hour. A part of the time the speed 
was as much as fifty miles an hour. The track was 
solid, evenly graded, heavily tied, well aligned, and 
the cars ran over it with no more swing and bounce 
than on an old road. The only exception to this is 
the piece from Great Falls to Helena, which had not 
been surfaced all the way. It is excellent railway 
construction, and it is necessary to emphasize this when 
we consider the rapidity with which it was built. 

The company has built this road without land grant 
or subsidy of any kind. The Montana extension, 
from Minot, Dakota, to Great Falls, runs mostly 
through Indian and military reservations, permission 
to pass through being given by special Act of Con- 
gress, and the company buying 200 feet road-way. 
Little of it, therefore, is open to settlement. 

These reservations, naming them in order westward, 
are as follows : The Fort Berthold Indian reservation, 
Dakota, the eastern boundary of which is twenty-seven 
miles west of Minot, has an area of 4550 square miles 
(about as large as Connecticut), or 2,912,000 acres. 
The Fort Buford military reservation, lying in Dakota 
and Montana, has an area of 900 square miles, or 576,- 
000 acres. The Blackfeet Indian reserve has an area 
of 34,000 square miles (the State of New York has 46,- 



142 South and West. 

000), or 21,760,000 acres. The Fort Assiniboin mili- 
tary reserve has an area of 869.82 square miles, or 
556,684 acres. 

It is a liberal estimate that there are 6000 Indians 
on the Blackfeet and Fort Berthold reservations. As 
nearly as I could ascertain, there are not over 3500 
Indians (some of those I saw were Crees on a long 
visit from Canada) on the Blackfeet reservation of 
about 22,000,000 acres. Some judges put the number 
as low as 2500 to all this territory, and estimate that 
there was about one Indian to ten square miles, or one 
Indian family to fifty square miles. We rode through 
300 miles of this territory along the Milk River, near- 
ly every acre of it good soil, with thick, abundant 
grass, sj^lendid wheat land. 

I have no space to take up the Indian problem. 
But the present condition of affairs is neither fair to 
white settlers nor just or humane to the Indians. 
These big reservations are of no use to them, nor they 
to the reservations. The buffaloes have disappeared ; 
they do not live by hunting ; they cultivate very lit- 
tle ground ; they use little even to pasture their po- 
nies. The}^ are fed and clothed by the Government, 
and they camp about the agencies in idleness, under 
conditions that pauperize them, destroy their man- 
hood, degrade them into dependent, vicious lives. 
The reservations ought to be sold, and the proceeds 
devoted to educating the Indians and setting them up 
in a self-sustaining existence. They should be al- 
lotted an abundance of good land, in the region to 
which they are acclimated, in severalty, and under 
such restrictions that they cannot alienate it at least 
for a oreneration or two. As the Indian is now, he 



A Far and Fair Country. 143 

will neither work, nor keep clean, nor live decently. 
Close to, the Indian is not a romantic object, and cer- 
tainly no better now morally than Lewis and Clarke 
depicted him in 1804. But he is a man ; he has been* 
barbarously treated; and it is certainly not beyond 
honest administration and Christian effort to better 
his condition. And his condition will not be im- 
proved simply by keeping from settlement and civil- 
ization the magnificent agricultural territor^^ that is 
reserved to him. 

Of this almost unknown country, pierced by the 
road west from Larimore, I can only make the brief- 
est notes. I need not say that this open, unobstructed 
highway of arable land and habitable country, from 
the Red River to the Rocky Mountains, was an as- 
tonishment to me ; but it is more to the purj)ose to 
say that the fertile region was a surprise to railway 
men who are perfectly familiar with the West. 

We had passed some snow in the night, which had 
been very cold, but there was very little at Larimore, 
a considerable town ; there was a high, raw wind 
during the day, and a temperature of about 10° 
above, which heavily frosted the car windows. At 
Devil's Lake (a body of brackish water twenty-eight 
miles long) is a settlement three years old, and from 
this and two insignificant stations beyond were shipped, 
in 1887, 1,500,000 bushels of wheat. The country be- 
yond is slightly rolling, fine land, has much wheat, 
little houses scattered about, some stock, very promis- 
ing altogether. Minot, where we crossed the Mouse 
River the second time, is a village of VOO people, with 
several brick houses and plenty of saloons. Thence 
we ran up to a plateau some three hundred feet high- 



144 South and West. 

er than the Mouse River Valley, and found a land 
more broken, and interspersed with rocky land and 
bowlders — the only touch of " bad lands " I recall on 
the route. We crossed several small streams. White 
Earth, Sandy, Little Muddy, and Muddy, and before 
reaching Williston descended into the valley of the 
Missouri, reached Fort Buford, w^here the Yellowstone 
comes in, entered what is called Paradise Valley, and 
continued parallel with the Missouri as far as the 
mouth of Milk River. Before reaching this we 
crossed the Big Muddy and the Poplar rivers, both 
rising in Canada. At Poplar Station is a large Ind- 
ian Agency, and hundreds of Teton Sioux Indians (I 
was told 1800) camped there in their conical tepees. 
I climbed the plateau above the station where the Ind- 
ians bury their dead, wrapping the bodies in blankets 
and buffalo-robes, and suspending them aloft on cross- 
bars supported by stakes, to keep them from the 
wolves. Beyond Assiniboin I saw a platform in a 
cottonwood-tree on which reposed the remains of a 
chief and his family. This country is all good, so far 
as I could see and learn. 

It gave me a sense of geographical deficiency in 
my education to travel three hundred miles on a river 
I had never heard of before. But it happened on the 
Milk River, a considerable but not navigable stream, 
although some six hundred miles long. The broad 
Milk River Valley is in itself an empire of excellent 
land, ready for the plough and the wheat -sower. 
Judging by the grass (which cures into the most 
nutritious feed as it stands), there had been no lack of 
rain during the summer ; but if there is lack of water, 
all the land can be irrigated by the Milk River, and 



A Far and Fair Cmntry. 145 

it may also be said of the country beyond to Great 
Falls that frequent streams make irrigation easy, if 
there is scant rainfall. I should say that this would 
be the only question about water. 

Leaving the Milk River Valley, we began to curve 
southward, passing Fort Assiniboin on our right. In 
this region and beyond at Fort Benton great herds of 
cattle are grazed by Government contractors, who 
supply the posts with beef. At the Big Sandy Sta- 
tion they were shipping cattle eastward. We crossed 
the Marias River (originally named Maria's River), a 
stream that had the respectful attention of Lewis and 
Clarke, and the Teton, a wilfully erratic watercourse 
in a narrow valley, which caused the railway con- 
structors a good deal of trouble. We looked down, 
in passing, on Fort Benton, nestled in a bend of the 
Missouri ; a smart town, with a daily newspaper, an 
old trading station. Shortly after leaving Assiniboin 
we saw on our left the Bear Paw Mountains and the 
noble Highwood Mountains, fine peaks, snow-dusted, 
about thirty miles from us, and adjoining them the 
Belt Mountains. Between them is a shapely little 
pyramid called the Wolf Butte. Far to our right 
were the Sweet Grass Hills, on the Canada line, where 
gold-miners are at work. I have noted of all this 
country that it is agriculturally fine. After Fort Ben- 
ton we had glimpses of the Rockies, off to the right 
(we had seen before the Little Rockies in the south, 
towards Yellowstone Park); then the Bird-tail Divide 
came in sight, and the mathematically Square Butte, 
sometimes called Fort Montana. 

At noon, November 20th, v/e reached Great Falls, 
where the Sun River, coming in from the west, joins 
10 



146 jSouth a?id Wtst. 

the Missouri. The railway crosses the Sun River, 
and runs on up the k^ft bank of the Missouri. Great 
Falls, which lies in a bend of the Missouri on the east 
side, was not then, but soon will be, connected with 
the line by a railway bridge. I wish I could convey 
to the reader some idea of the beauty of the view as 
we came out upon the Sun River Valley, or the feel- 
ing of exhilaration and elevation we experienced. I 
had come to no place before that did not seem remote, 
far from home, lonesome. Here the aspect was friend- 
ly, livable, almost home-like. We seemed to have 
come out, after a long journey, to a place where one 
might be content to stay for some time — to a far but 
fair country, on top of the world, as it were. Xot 
that the elevation is great — only about 3000 feet 
above the sea — nor the horizon illimitable, as on the 
great plains ; its spaciousness is brought within hu- 
man sympathy by guardian hills and distant mountain 
ranges. 

A more sweet, smiling picture than the Sun River 
Valley the traveller may go far to see. With an av- 
erage breadth of not over two and a half to five miles, 
level, richly grassed, flanked by elevations that swell 
lip to plateaus, through the valley the Sun River, 
clear, full to the grassy banks, comes down like a rib- 
bon of silver, perhaps SOO feet broad before its junc- 
tion. Across the far end of it, seventy-five miles dis- 
tant, but seemingly not more than twenty, run the 
silver serrated peaks of the Rocky Mountains, snow- 
clad and sparkling in the sun. At distances of twelve 
and fifty miles up the valley have been for years pros- 
perous settlements, with school-houses and churches, 
hitherto cut olf from the world. 



A Far and Fair Country. 147 

The whole rolling, arable, though treeless country 
in view is beautiful, and the far prospects are magnifi- 
cent. I suppose that something of the homelikeuess of 
the region is due to the presence of the great Missouri 
River (a connection with the world we know), which 
is here a rapid, clear stream, in permanent rock-laid 
banks. At the town a dam has been thrown across 
it, and the width above the dam, where we crossed it, 
is about ISOO feet. The day was fair and not cold, 
but a gale of wind from the south-west blew with such 
violence that the ferry-boat was unmanageable, and 
we went over in little skiffs, much tossed about by 
the white-capped waves. 

In June, ISSO, there was not a house within twelve 
miles of this place. The country is now taken up 
and dotted with claim shanties, and Great Falls is a 
town of over 1000 inhabitants, regularly laid out, with 
streets indeed extending far on to the prairie, a hand- 
some and commodious hotel, several brick buildings, 
and new houses going up in all directions. Central 
lots, fifty feet by two hundred and fifty, are said to 
sell for $5000, and I was offered a corner lot on Tenth 
Street, away out on the prairie, for 81500, including 
the corner stake. 

It is difiicult to write of this country without seem- 
ing exaggeration, and the habitual frontier boastful- 
ness makes the acquisition of bottom facts difiicult. 
It is plain to be seen that it is a good grazing 
country, and the experimental fields of wheat near the 
town show that it is equally well adapted to wheat- 
raising. The vegetables grown there are enormous 
and solid, especially potatoes and turnips ; I have the 
outline of a turnip which measured seventeen inches 



148 South and West. 

across, seven inches deep, and weighed twenty-four 
pounds. The region is underlaid by bituminous coal, 
good coking quality, and extensive mines are opening 
in the neighborhood. I have no doubt from what I 
saw and heard that iron of good quality (hematite) is 
abundant. It goes without saying that the Montana 
mountains are full of other minerals. The present 
advantage of Great Falls is in the possession of un- 
limited water-power in the Missouri River. 

As to rainfall and climate? The grass shows no 
lack of rain, and the wheat was raised in 1887 without 
irrigation. But irrigation from the Missouri and 
Sun rivers is easy, if needed. The thermometer 
shows a more temperate and less rigorous climate 
than Minnesota and north Dakota. Unless everybody 
fibs, the winters are less severe, and stock ranges and 
fattens all winter. Less snow falls here than farther 
east and south, and that which falls does not usually 
remain long. The truth seems to be that the mercury 
occasionally goes very low, but that every few days a 
warm Pacific wind from the south-west, the " Chinook," 
blows a gale, which instantly raises the temperature, 
and sweeps off the snow in twenty-four hours. I was 
told that ice rarely gets more than ten inches thick, 
and that ploughing can be done as late as the 20th of 
December, and recommenced from the 1st to the 15th 
of March. I did not stay long enough to verify these 
statements. There had been a slight fall of snow in 
October, which speedily disappeared. November 20th 
was pleasant, with a strong Chinook wind. November 
21st there was a driving snow-storm. 

The region is attractive to the sight-seer. I can 
speak of only two things, the Springs and the Falls. 



A Far and Fair Country. 149 

There is a series of rapids and falls, for twelve miles 
below the town ; and the river drops down rapidly 
into a canon which is in some places nearly 200 feet 
deep. The first fall is twenty-six feet high. The 
most beautiful is the Rainbow Fall, six miles from 
town. This cataract, in a wild, deep gorge, has a 
width of 1400 feet, nearly as straight across as an ar- 
tificial dam, with a perpendicular plunge of fifty feet. 
What makes it impressive is the immense volume of 
water. Dashed upon the rocks below, it sends up 
clouds of spray, which the sun tinges Avith prismatic 
colors the whole breadth of the magnificent fall. 
Standing half-way down the precipice another consid- 
erable and regular fall is seen above, while below are 
rapids and falls again at the bend, and beyond, great 
reaches of tumultuous river in the canon. It is alto- 
gether a wild and splendid spectacle. Six miles be- 
low, the river takes a continuous though not perpen- 
dicular plunge of ninety-six feet. 

One of the most exquisitely beautiful natural ob- 
jects I know is the Spring, a mile above Rainbow Fall. 
Out of a rock}^ ledge, sloping up some ten feet above 
the river, burst several springs of absolutely crystal 
water, powerfully bubbling up like small geysers, and 
together forming instantly a splendid stream, which 
falls into the Missouri. So perfectly transparent is 
the water that the springs seem to have a depth of 
only fifteen inches ; they are fifteen feet deep. In 
them grow flat -leaved plants of vivid green, shades 
from lightest to deepest emerald, and when the sun- 
light strikes into their depths the effect is exquisitely 
beautiful. Mingled with the emerald are maroon col- 
ors that heighten the effect. The vigor of the out- 



150 South and West. 

burst, the volume of water, the transparency, the play 
of sunlight on the lovely colors, give one a positively 
new sensation. 

I have left no room to speak of the road of ninety- 
eight miles through the caiion of the Missouri and the 
canon of the Prickly-Pear to Helena — about 1400 feet 
higher than Great Falls. It is a marvellously pict- 
uresque road, following the mighty river, winding 
through crags and precipices of trap-rock set on end 
in fantastic array, and wild mountain scenery. On 
the route are many pleasant places, openings of fine 
valleys, thriving ranches, considerable stock and oats, 
much land ploughed and cultivated. The valley broad- 
ens out before we reach Helena and enter Last Chance 
Gulch, now the main street of the city, out of which 
millions of gold have been taken. 

At Helena we reach familiar ground. The 21st 
was a jubilee day for the city and the whole Terri- 
tory. Cannon, bells, whistles, welcomed the train and 
the man, and fifteen thousand people hurrahed; the 
town was gayly decorated; there was a long proces- 
sion, speeches and music in the Opera-house in the af- 
ternoon, and fireworks, illumination, and banquet in 
the evening. The reason of the boundless enthusiasm 
of Helena was in the fact that the day gave it a new 
competing line to the East, and opened up the coal, 
iron, and wheat fields of north Montana. 



VIII. 

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL TOPICS. MINNE- 
SOTA AND WISCONSIN. 

A VISITOR at a club in Chicago was pointed out a 
table at which usually lunched a hundred and fifty 
millions of dollars ! This impressive statement was 
as significant in its way as the list of the men, in the 
days of Emerson, Agassiz, and Longfellow, who dined 
together as the Saturday Club in Boston. We can- 
not, however, generalize from this that the only thing 
considered in the North-west is money, and that the 
only thing held in esteem in Boston is intellect. 

The chief concerns in the North-west are material, 
and the making of money, sometimes termed the "de- 
velopment of resources," is of the first importance. 
In Minneapolis and St. Paul, social position is more 
determined by money than it is in most Eastern cities, 
and this makes social life more democratic, so far as 
traditions and family are concerned. I desire not to 
overstate this, for money is potent everywhere; but I 
should say that a person not devoted to business, or 
not succeeding in it, but interested rather in intel- 
lectual pursuits — study, research, art (not decorative), 
education, and the like — would find less sympathy 
there than in Eastern cities of the same size and less 
consideration. Indeed, I was told, more than once, 
that the spirit of plutocracy is so strong in these cities 



152 South and West. 

as to make a very disagreeable atmosphere for people 
who value the higher things in life more than money 
and what money only will procure, and display which 
is always more or less vulgar. But it is necessary to 
get closer to the facts than this statement. 

The materialistic spirit is very strong in the West; 
of necessity it is, in the struggle for existence and po- 
sition going on there, and in the unprecedented oppor- 
tunities for making fortunes. And hence arises a pre- 
vailing notion that any education is of little value that 
does not bear directly upon material success. I should 
say that the professions, including divinity and the 
work of the scholar and the man of letters, do not 
have the weight there that they do in some other 
places. The professional man, either in the college 
or the pulpit, is expected to look alive and keep up 
with the procession. Tradition is weak; it is no ob- 
jection to a thing that it is new, and in the general 
strain " sensations " are welcome. The general motto 
is, " Be alive ; be practical." Naturally, also, wealth 
recently come by desires to assert itself a little in dis- 
play, in ostentatious houses, luxurious living, dress, 
jewellery, even to the frank delight in the diamond 
shirt-stud. 

But we are writing of Americans, and the Ameri- 
cans are the quickest people in the world to adapt 
themselves to new situations. The Western people 
travel much, at home and abroad, and they do not re- 
quire a very long experience to know what is in bad 
taste. They are as quick as anybody — I believe they 
gave us the phrase — to " catch on " to quietness and a 
low tone. Indeed, I don't know but they would boast 
that if it is a question of subdued style, they can beat 



Economic and Social Topics. 153 

the world. The revolution which has gone all over 
the country since the Exposition of 1876 in house-fur- 
nishing and decoration is quite as apparent in the West 
as in the East. The West has not suffered more than 
the East from eccentricities of architecture in the past 
twenty years. Violations of good taste are pretty well 
distributed, but of new houses the proportion of hand- 
some, solid, good structures is as large in the West as 
in the East, and in the cities I think the West has the 
advantage in variety. It must be frankly said that if 
the Easterner is surprised at the size, cost, and palatial 
character of many of their residences, he is not less 
surprised by the refinement and good taste of their in- 
teriors. There are cases where money is too evident, 
where the splendor has been ordered, but there are 
plenty of other cases where individual taste is appar- 
ent, and love of harmony and beauty. What I am 
trying to say is that the East undervalues the real re- 
finement of living going along with the admitted cost 
and luxury in the West. The art of dining is said to 
be a test of civilization — on a certain plane. Well, 
dining, in good houses (I believe that is the phrase), 
is much the same East and West as to appointments, 
service, cuisine, and talk, with a trifle more freedom 
and sense of newness in the West. No doubt there is 
a difference in tone, appreciable but not easy to define. 
It relates less to the things than the way the things 
are considered. Where a family has had "things" for 
two or three generations they are less an object than 
an unregarded matter of course ; where things and a 
manner of living are newly acquired, they have more 
importance in themselves. An old community, if it is 
really civilized (I mean a state in which intellectual 



151 South and West. 

concerns are paramount), values less and less, as an 
end, merely material refinement. The tendency all 
over the United States is for wealth to run into vul- 
garity. 

In St. Paul and Minneapolis one thing notable is 
the cordial hospitality, another is the public spirit, 
and another is the intense devotion to business, the 
forecast and alertness in new enterprises. Where 
society is fluid and on the move, it seems compara- 
tively easy to interest the citizens in any scheme for 
the public good. The public spirit of those cities is 
admirable. One notices also an uncommon power of 
organization, of devices for saving time. An illustra- 
tion of this is the immense railway transfer ground 
here. Midway between the cities is a mile square of 
land where all the great railway lines meet, and by 
means of communicating tracks easily and cheaply 
exchange freight cars, immensely increasing the facil- 
ity and lessening the cost of transportation. Anoth- 
er illustration of system is the State office of Public 
Examiner, an office peculiar to Minnesota, an office su- 
pervising banks, public institutions, and county treas- 
uries, by means of which a uniform system of account- 
ing is enforced for all public funds, and safety is 
insured. 

There is a large furniture and furnishing store in 
Minneapolis, well sustained by the public, which gives 
one a new idea of the taste of the North-west. A 
community that buys furniture so elegant and chaste 
in design, and stuffs and decorations so a3sthetically 
good, as this shop offers it, is certainly not deficient 
either in material refinement or the means to gratify 
the love of it. 



EconomiG and Social Topics. 155 

"What is there besides this tremendous energy, very- 
material prosperity, and undeniable refinement in liv- 
ing? I do not know that the excellently managed 
public-school system offers anything peculiar for com- 
ment. But the High-school in St. Paul is worth a 
visit. So far as I could judge, the method of teach- 
ing is admirable, and produces good results. It has 
no rules, nor any espionage. Scholars are put upon 
their honor. One object of education being charac- 
ter, it is well to have good behavior consist, not in 
conformity to artificial laws existing only in school, 
but to principles of good conduct that should prevail 
everywhere. There is system here, but the conduct 
expected is that of well-bred boys and girls anywhere. 
The plan works well, and there are very few cases of 
discipline. A manual training school is attached — a 
notion growing in favor in the West, and practised in 
a scientific and truly educational spirit. Attendance 
is not compulsory, but a considerable proportion of 
the pupils, boys and girls, spend a certain number of 
hours each week in the workshops, learning the use of 
tools, and making simple objects to an accurate scale 
from drawings on the blackboard. The design is 
not at all to teach a trade. The object is strictly 
educational, not simply to give manual facility and 
knowledge in the use of tools, but to teach accuracy, 
the mental training that there is in working out a def- 
inite, specific purpose. 

The State University is still in a formative condi- 
tion, and has attached to it a preparatory school. Its 
first class graduated only in 1872. It sends out on 
an average about twenty graduates a year in the va- 
rious departments, science, literature, mechanic arts, 



156 South and ^Yest. 

and agriculture. The bane of a State university is 
politics, and in the West the hand of the Granger 
is on the college, endeavoring to make it " practical." 
Probably this modern idea of education will have to 
run its course, and so long as it is running its course 
the Eastern colleges which adhere to the idea of in- 
tellectual discipline will attract the young men who 
value a liberal rather than a material education. The 
State University of Minnesota is thriving in the en- 
largement of its facilities. About one-third of its 
scholars are women, but I notice that in the last cat- 
alogue, in the Senior Class of twenty-six there is only 
one woman. There are two independent institutions 
also that should be mentioned, both w^ithin the limits 
of St. Paul, the Hamline University, under Methodist 
auspices, and the McAllister College, under Presby- 
terian. I did not visit the former, but the latter, at 
least, though just beginning, has the idea of a clas- 
sical education foremost, and does not adopt co-educa- 
tion. Its library is w^ell begun by the gift of a mis- 
cellaneous collection, containing many rare and old 
books, by the Rev. E. D. Neill, the well-known anti- 
quarian, who has done so much to illuminate the colo- 
nial history of Virginia and Maryland. In the State 
Historical Society, which has rooms in the Capitol in 
St. Paul, a vigorous and well-managed society, is a 
valuable collection of books illustrating the history 
of the North-west. The visitor will notice in St. Paul 
quite as much taste for reading among business men 
as exists elsewhere, a growing fancy for rare books, 
and find some private collections of interest. Though 
music and art cannot be said to be generally culti- 
vated, there are in private circles musical enthusiasm 



Economic and Social Topics. 157 

and musical ability, and many of the best examples 
of modern painting are to be found in private houses. 
Indeed, there is one gallery in which is a collection 
of pictures by foreign artists that would be notable 
in any city. These things are mentioned as indica- 
tions of a liberalizing use of wealth. 

Wisconsin is not only one of the most progressive, 
but one of the most enlightened, States in the Union. 
Physically it is an agreeable and beautiful State, agri- 
culturally it is rich, in the southern and central por- 
tions at least, and it is overlaid with a perfect net- 
work of railways. All this is well known. I wish to 
speak of certain other things which give it distinc- 
tion. I mean the prevailing spirit in education and 
in social - economic problems. In some respects it 
leads all the other States. 

There seem to be two elements in the State con- 
tending for the mastery, one the New England, but 
emancipated from tradition, the other the foreign, 
with ideas of liberty not of New England origin. 
Neither is afraid of new ideas nor of trying social 
experiments. Co-education seems to be everywhere 
accepted without question, as if it were already de- 
monstrated that the mmgling of the sexes in the 
higher education will produce the sort of men and 
women most desirable in the highest civilization. 
The success of women in the higher schools, the ca- 
pacity shown by women in the management of pub- 
lic institutions and in reforms and charities, have 
perhaps something to do with the favor to woman 
suffrage. It may be that, if women vote there in 
general elections as well as school matters, on the 



158 South and West. 

ground that every public office " relates to educa- 
tion," Prohibition will be agitated as it is in most 
other States, but at present the lager-bier interest is 
too strong to give Prohibition much chance. The 
capital invested in the manufacture of beer makes 
this interest a political element of great importance. 

Milwaukee and Madison may be taken to represent 
fairly the civilization of Wisconsin. Milwaukee, hav- 
ing a population of about 175,000, is a beautiful city, 
with some characteristics peculiar to itself, having the 
settled air of being much older than it is, a place ac- 
customed to money and considerable elegance of liv- 
ing. The situation on the lake is fine, the high curv- 
ing bluffs offerinoj most attractive sites for residences, 
and the rolling country about having a quiet beauty. 
Grand Avenue, an extension of the main business thor- 
oughfare of the city, runs out into the country some 
two miles, broad, with a solid road, a stately avenue, 
lined with fine dwellings, many of them palaces in size 
and elegant in design. Fashion seems to hesitate be- 
tween the east side and the west side, but the east or 
lake side seems to have the advantage in situation, 
certainly in views, and contains a greater proportion 
of the American population than the other. Indeed, 
it is not easy to recall a quarter of any busy city 
which combines more comfort, evidences of wealth 
and taste and refinement, and a certain domestic char- 
acter, than this portion of the town on the bluffs. Pros- 
pect Avenue and the adjacent streets. With the many 
costly and elegant houses there is here and there one 
rather fantastic, but the whole effect is pleasing, and 
the traveller feels no hesitation in deciding that this 
would be an agreeable place to live. From the ave- 



Economic and Social Topics, 159 

nue the lake prospect is wonderfully attractive — the 
beauty of Lake Michigan in changing color and varie- 
ty of lights in sun and storm cannot be too much in- 
sisted on — and this is especially true of the noble Es- 
planade, where stands the bronze statue (a gift of two 
citizens) of Solomon Juneau, the first settler of Mil- 
waukee in 1818. It is a very satisfactory figure, and 
placed where it is, it gives a sort of foreign distinc- 
tion to the open place which the city has wisely left 
for public use. In this part of the town is the house 
of the Milwaukee Club, a good building, one of the 
most tasteful internally, and one of the best appointed, 
best arranged, and comfortable club-houses in the coun- 
try. Near this is the new Art Museum (also the gift 
of a private citizen), a building greatly to be com- 
mended for its excellent proportions, simplicity, and 
chasteness of style, and adaptability to its purpose. 
It is a style that will last, to please the eye, and be 
more and more appreciated as the taste of the com- 
munity becomes more and more refined. 

In this quarter are many of the churches, of the 
average sort, but none calling for special mention 
except St. Paul's, which is noble in proportions and 
rich in color, and contains several notable windows 
of stained glass, one of them occupying the entire 
end of one transept, the largest, I believe, in- the 
country. It is a copy of Dore's painting of Christ 
on the way to the Crucifixion, an illuminated street 
scene, with superb architecture of marble and por- 
phyry, and crowded with hundreds of figures in col- 
ors of Oriental splendor. The colors are rich and 
harmonious, but it is very brilliant, flashing in the 
sunlight with magnificent effect, and I am not sure 



160 South and West. 

but it would attract the humble sinners of Milwaukee 
from a contemplation of their little faults which they 
go to church to confess. 

The city does not neglect education, as the many 
thriving public schools testify. It has a public circu- 
lating library of 42,000 volumes, sustained at an ex- 
pense of 822,000 a year by a tax; is free, and well pat- 
ronized. There are good private collections of books 
also, one that I saw large and worthy to be called a 
library, especially strong in classic English literature. 

Perhaps the greatest industry of the city, certainly 
the most conspicuous, is brewing. I do not say that 
the city is in the hands of the brewers, but with their 
vast establishments they wield great power. One of 
them, about the largest in the country, and said to 
equal in its capacity any in Europe, has in one group 
seven enormous buildings, and is impressive by its ex- 
tent and orderly management, as well as by the rivers 
of amber fluid which it pours out for this thirsty coun- 
try. Milv/aukee, with its large German element — two- 
thirds of the population, most of whom are freethink- 
ers — has no Sunday except in a holiday sense ; the 
theatres are all open, and the pleasure-gardens, which 
are extensive, are crowded with merrymakers in the 
season. It is, in short, the Continental fashion, and 
while the churches and church-goers are like churches 
and church-goers everywhere, there is an air of gen- 
eral Continental freedom. 

The general impression of Milwaukee is that it is a 
city of much wealth and a great deal of comfort, with 
a settled, almost conservative feeling, like an Eastern 
city, and charming, cultivated social life, with the grace 
and beauty that are common in American society any- 



Economic and Social Tojpics. 161 

where. I think the men generally would be called 
well-looking, robust, of the quiet, assured manner of 
an old community. The women seen on the street 
and in the shops are of good physique and good col- 
or and average good looks, without anything startling 
in the way of beauty or elegance. I speak of the gen- 
eral aspect of the town, and I mention the well-to-do 
physical condition because it contradicts the English 
prophecy of a physical decadence in the West, owing 
to the stimulating climate and the restless pursuit of 
wealth. On the train to Madison (the line runs through 
a beautiful country) one might have fancied that he 
was on a local Kew England train: the same plain, 
good sort of people, and in abundance the well-look- 
ing, domestic sort of young women. 

Madison is a great contrast to Milwaukee. Although 
it is the political and educational centre, has the Capi- 
tol and the State University, and a population of about 
15,000, it is like a large village, with the village habits 
and friendliness. On elevated, hilly ground, between 
two charming lakes, it has an almost unrivalled situa- 
tion, and is likely to possess, in the progress of years 
and the accumulation of wealth, the picturesqueness 
and beauty that travellers ascribe to Stockholm. With 
the hills of the town, the gracefully curving shores of 
the lakes and their pointed bays, the gentle elevations 
beyond the lakes, and the capacity of these two bodies 
of water as pleasure resorts, with elegant music pavil- 
ions and fleets of boats for the sail and the oar — why 
do we not take a hint from the painted Venetian sail? 
— there is no limit to what may be expected in the way 
of refined beauty of Madison in the summer, if it re- 
mains a city of education and of laws, and does not 
11 



162 South and West. 

get up a "boom," and set up factories, and blacken 
all the landscape with coal smoke ! 

The centre of the town is a big square, pleasantly 
tree-planted, so large that the facing rows of shops 
and houses have a remote and dwarfed appearance, 
and in the middle of it is the great pillared State- 
house, American style. The town itself is one of 
unpretentious, comfortable houses, some of them wath 
elegant interiors, having plenty of books and the spoils 
of foreign travel. In one of them, the old-fashioned 
but entirely charming mansion of Governor Fairchild, 
I cannot refrain from saying, is a collection which, so 
far as I know, is unique in the world — a collection to 
w^hich the helmet of Don Quixote gives a certain fla- 
vor; it is of barbers' basins, of all ages and countries. 

^yisconsin is working out its educational ideas on 
an intelligent system, and one that may be expected 
to demonstrate the full value of the popular method 
— I mean a more intimate connection of the univer- 
sity wdth the life of the people than exists elsewhere. 
What effect this wdll have upon the higher education 
in the ultimate civilization of the State is a question 
of serious and curious interest. Unless the experience 
of the ages is misleading, the tendency of the " prac- 
tical" in all education is a downward and material 
one, and the highest civilization must continue to de- 
pend upon a pure scholarship, and upon w^hat are 
called abstract ideas. Even so practical a man as 
Socrates found the natural sciences inadequate to the 
inner needs of the soul. " I thought," he says, " as I 
have failed in the contemplation of true existence (by 
means of the sciences), I ought to be careful that I 
did not lose the eye of the soul, as people may injure 



Economic and Social Topics. 163 

their bodily eye by gazing on the sun during an eclipse. 
. . . That occurred to me, and I was afraid that my soul 
might be blinded altogether if I looked at things with 
my eyes, or tried by the helj) of the senses to appre- 
hend them. And I thought I had better have re- 
course to ideas, and seek in them the truth of exist- 
ence." The intimate union of the university with the 
life of the people is a most desirable object, if the uni- 
versity does not descend and lose its high character in 
the process. 

The graded school system of the State is vigorous, 
all -working up to the University. This is a State in- 
stitution, and the State is fairly liberal to it, so far as 
practical education is concerned. It has a magnificent 
new Science building, and will have excellent shops 
and machinery for the sciences (especially the applied) 
and the mechanic arts. The system is elective. A 
small per cent, of the students take Greek, a larger 
number Latin, French, and German, but the Univer- 
sity is largely devoted to science. In all the depart- 
ments, including law, there are about six hundred stu- 
dents, of whom above one hundred are girls. There 
seems to be no doubt about co-education as a prac- 
tical matter in the conduct of the college, and as a 
desirable thing for women. The girls are good stu- 
dents, and usually take more than half the highest 
honors on the marking scale. Notwithstanding the 
testimony of the marks, however, the boys say that 
the girls don't "know" as much as they do about 
things generally, and they (the boys) have no doubt 
of their ability to pass the girls either in scholarship 
or practical affairs in the struggle of life. The idea 
seems to be that the girls are serious in education 



164: South and West. 

only lip to a certain point, and that marriage will 
practically end the rivalry. 

The distinguishing thing, however, about the State 
University is its vital connection with the farmers 
and the agricultural interests. I do not refer to the 
agricultural department, which it has in common with 
many colleges, nor to the special short agricultural 
course of three months in the winter, intended to give 
farmers' boys, who enter it without examination or 
other connection with the University, the most availa- 
ble agricultural information in the briefest time, the 
intention being not to educate boys away from a taste 
for farming but to make them better farmers. The 
students must be not less than sixteen years old, and 
have a common-school education. During the term 
of twelve weeks they have lectures by the professors 
and recitations on practical and theoretical agricult- 
ure, on elementary and agricultural chemistry, on ele- 
mental botany, with laboratory practice, and on the 
anatomy of our domestic animals and the treatment 
of their common diseases. But what I wish to call 
special attention to is the connection of the Univer- 
sity with the farmers' institutes. 

A special Act of the Legislature, drawn by a lawyer, 
Mr. C. E. Estabrook, authorized the farmers' institutes, 
and placed them under the control of the regents of 
the University, who have the power to select a State 
superintendent to control them. A committee of three 
of the regents has special charge of the institutes. 
Thus the farmers are brought into direct relation 
with the University, and while, as a prospectus says, 
they are not actually non-resident students of the Uni- 
versity, they receive information and instruction di- 



Economic and Social Topics. 165 

rectly from it. The State appropriates twelve thou- 
sand dollars a year to this work, which pays the sal- 
aries of Mr. W. H. Morrison, the superintendent, to 
whose tact and energy the success of the institutes 
is largely due, and his assistants, and enables him to 
pay the expenses of specialists and agriculturists who 
can instruct the farmers and wisely direct the discus- 
sions at the meetings. By reason of this complete or- 
ganization, which penetrates every part of the Statfe, 
subjects of most advantage are considered, and time 
is not wasted in merely amateur debates. 

I know of no other State where a like system of 
popular instruction on a vital and universal interest 
of the State, directed by the highest educational au- 
thority, is so perfectly organized and carried on with 
such unity of purpose and detail of administration ; 
no other in which the farmer is brought systematically 
into such direct relations to the university. In the 
current year there have been held eightj^-two farmers' 
institutes in forty -five counties. The list of practical 
topics discussed is 279, and in this service have been 
engaged one hundred and seven workers, thirty-one 
of whom are specialists from other States. This is 
an ''agricultural college," on a grand scale, brought 
to the homes of the people. The meetings are man- 
aged by local committees in such a way as to evoke 
local pride, interest, and talent. I Avill mention some 
of the topics that were thoroughly discussed at one 
of the institutes : clover as a fertilizer ; recuperative 
agriculture ; bee-keeping ; taking care of the little 
things about the house and farm ; the education for 
farmers' daughters ; the whole economy of sheep 
husbandry; Q^g production ; poultry ; the value of 



166 South and West 

thoiig-ht and application in farming ; horses to breed 
for the farm and market ; breeding and management 
of s^yiIle : mixed farming ; grain-raising ; assessment 
and collection of taxes ; does knowledge pay? ^^with 
illustrations of money made by knowledge of the 
market) ; breeding and care of cattle, with expert 
testimony as to the best sorts of cows ; points in 
corn culture ; full discussion of small-fruit culture ; 
butter-making as a fine art ; the dairy; our country 
roads; agricultural education. So, during the winter, 
every topic that concerns the well-being of the home, 
the profit of the farm, the moral welfare o? the peo- 
ple and their prosperity, was intelligently discussed, 
with audiences fully awake to the value of this prac- 
tical and applied education. Some of the best of 
these discussions are printed and widely distributed. 
3Iost of them are full of wise details in the way of 
thrift and money-making, but I am glad to see that 
the meetings also consider the truth that as much 
care should be given to the rearing of boys and girls 
as of calves and colts, and that brains are as necessary 
in farming as in any other occupation. 

As these farmers' institutes are conducted, I do not 
know any iufiuence comparable to them in waking up 
the farmers to think, to inquire into new and im- 
prove^! methods, and to see in what real prosperity 
consists, With prosperity, as a rule, the farmer and 
his family are conservative, law-keeping, church-going, 
good citizens. The little appropriation of twelve 
thousand dollars has already returned to the State a 
hundred- fold financially and a thousand-fold in general 
intelligence. 

I have spoken of the habit in Minnesota and Wis- 



Uctmonic and Social 7\^j^i'cs. 107 

cousin of dopondiiig mostly upon one crop — that of 
spring' wheat — and tho disasters from this single re- 
liance in bad years. Hard lessons are beginning to 
teaeh the advantage of mixed farming and stock- 
raising. In this change the farmers' institutes of 
AVisconsin have been potent. As one observer says, 
'•They have produced a revolution in the mode of 
farming, raising crops, and caring for stock."* The 
farmers have been enabled to protect themselves 
against the ctYccts of drought and other evils. Tak- 
ing the advice of the institute in ISSO, the farmers 
planted 50,000 acres of ensilage corn, which took the 
place of the short hay crop caused by the drought. 
This provision saved thousaiuls of dollars' Avorth of 
stock in several counties. From all over the State 
comes the testimony of farmers a* to the good results 
of the institute work, like this: ''Several thousand 
dollars' worth oi improved stock have been brought 
in. Creameries and cheese-factories have been estab- 
lished and well supported. Farmers are no longer 
raising grain exclusively as heretofore. Our hill-sides 
are covered with clover. Our farmers are encouraged 
to labor anew. A new era of prosperity in our State 
dates from the farmers' institutes." 

There is abundant evidence that a revolution is go- 
ing on in the farming of Wisconsin, greatly assisted, 
if not inaugurated, by this systematic popular instruc- 
tion from the University as a centre. It may not 
greatly interest the reader that the result of this will 
be greater agricultural wealth in Wisconsin, but it 
does concern him that putting intelligence into farm- 
ing must inevitably raise the level of the home life 
and the ireneral civilization of Wisconsin. I have 



168 South and West 

spoken of this centralized, systematic effort in some 
detail because it seems more efficient than the work 
of agricultural societies and sporadic institutes in 
other States. 

In another matter Wisconsin has taken a step in 
advance of other States ; that is, in the care of the 
insane. The State has about 2600 insane, increasing 
at the rate of about 167 a year. The provisions in 
the State for these are the State Hospital (capacity of 
500), Northern Hospital (capacity of 600), the Mil- 
waukee Asylum (capacity of 255), and fifteen county 
asylums for the chronic insane, including two nearly 
ready (capacity 1220). The improvement in the care 
of the insane consists in several particulars — the do- 
ing away of restraints, either by mechanical appli- 
ances or by narcotics, reasonable separation of the 
chronic cases from the others, increased liberty, and 
the substitution of wholesome labor for idleness. 
Many of these changes have been brought about by 
the establishment of county asjdums, the feature of 
which I wish specially to speak. The State asylums 
were crowded beyond their proper capacity, classifi- 
cation was difficult in them, and a large number of 
the insane were miserably housed in county jails and 
poor-houses. The evils of great establishments were 
more and more apparent, and it was determined to 
try the experiment of county asylums. These have 
now been in operation for six years, and a word about 
their constitution and perfectly successful operation 
may be of public service. 

These asylums, which are only for the chronic in- 
sane, are managed by local authorities, but under con- 
stant and close State supervision; this last provision 



Economic and Social .Topics. 169 

is absolutely essential, and no doubt accounts for the 
success of the undertaking. It is not necessary here 
to enter into details as to the construction of these 
buildings. They are of brick, solid, plain, comforta- 
ble, and of a size to accommodate not less than fifty 
nor more than one hundred inmates : an institution 
with less than fifty is not economical; one with a 
larger number than one hundred is unwieldy, and be- 
yond the personal supervision of the superintendent. 
A farm is needed for economy in maintenance and to 
furnish occupation for the men; about four acres for 
each inmate is a fair allowance. The land should be 
fertile, and adapted to a variety of crops as well as to 
cattle, and it should have woodland to give occupation 
in the winter. The fact is recognized that idleness is 
no better for an insane than for a sane person. The 
house-work is all done by the women; the farm, gar- 
den, and general out-door work by the men. Expe- 
rience shows that three-fourths of the chronic insane 
can be furnished occupation of some sort, and greatly 
to their physical and moral well-being. The nervous- 
ness incident always to restraint and idleness disap- 
pears with liberty and occupation. Hence greater 
happiness and comfort to the insane, and occasionally 
a complete or partial cure. 

About one attendant to twenty insane persons is 
sufficient, but it is necessary that these should have 
intelligence and tact; the men capable of leading in 
farm-work, the women to instruct in house-work and 
dress-making, and it is well if they can play some 
musical instrument and direct in amusements. One 
of the most encouraging features of this experiment 
in small asylums has been the discovery of so many 



170 South and West. 

efficient superintendents and matrons among the in- 
telligent farmers and business men of the rural dis- 
tricts, Avlio have the practical sagacity and financial 
ability to carry on these institutions successfully. 

These asylums are as open as a school; no locked 
doors (instead of window-bars, the glass-frames are 
of iron painted white), no pens made by high fences. 
The inmates are free to go and come at their work, 
with no other restraint than the watch of the attend- 
ants. The asylum is a home and not a prison. The 
great thing is to provide occupation. The insane, it 
is found, can be trained to regular industr^^, and it is 
remarkable how little restraint is needed if an earnest 
effort is made to do without it. In the county asy- 
lums of Wisconsin about one person in a thousand is 
in restraint or seclusion each day. The whole theory 
seems to be to treat the insane like persons in some 
way diseased, who need occupation, amusement, kind- 
ness. The practice of this theory in the Wisconsin 
county asylums is so successful that it must ultimate- 
ly affect the treatment of the insane all over the 
country. 

And the beauty of it is that it is as economical as 
it is enlightened and humane. The secret of provid- 
ing occupation for this class is to buy as little material 
and hire as little labor as possible ; let the women 
make the clothes, and the men do the farm -work 
without the aid of machinery. The surprising result 
of this is that some of these asylums approach the 
point of being self-supporting, and all of them save 
money to the counties, compared with the old method. 
The State has not lost by these asylums, and the 
counties have gained ; nor has the economy been pur- 



EconorniG and Social Topics. 171 

chased at the expense of humanity to the insane ; the 
insane in the county asylums have been as well clothed, 
lodged, and fed as in the State institutions, and have 
had more freedom, and consequently more personal 
comfort and a better chance of abating their mania. 
This is the result arrived at by an exhaustive report 
on these county asylums in the report of the State 
Board of Charities and Reforms, of which Mr. Albert 
O. Wright is secretary. The average cost per week 
per capita of patients in the asylums by the latest re- 
port was, in the State Hospital, |4.39; in the North- 
ern Hospital, $4.33; in the county asylums, $1.89. 

The new system considers the education of the 
chronic insane an important part of their treatment ; 
not specially book-learning (though that may be in- 
cluded), but training of the mental, moral, and phys- 
ical faculties in habits of order, propriety, and labor. 
By these means wonders have been worked for the in- 
sane. The danger, of course, is that the local asylums 
may fall into unproductive routine, and that politics 
Avill interfere with the intelligent State supervision. 
If Wisconsin is able to keep her State institutions out 
of the clutches of men with whom politics is a busi- 
ness simply for what they can make out of it (as it is 
with those who oppose a civil service not based upon 
partisan dexterity and subserviency), she will carry 
her enlightened ideas into the making of a model 
State. The working out of such a noble reform as 
this in the treatment of the insane can only be in- 
trusted to men specially qualified by knowledge, sym- 
pathy, and enthusiasm, and would be impossible in 
the hands of changing political workers. The sys- 
tematized enlightenment of the farmers in thie farmers' 



172 South and West. 

institutes by means of their vital connection with the 
University needs the steady direction of those who are 
devoted to it, and not to any party success. As to 
education generally, it may be said that while for the 
present the popular favor to the State University de- 
pends upon its being "practical" in this and other 
ways, the time will come when it will be seen that the 
highest service it can render the State is b)^ upholding 
pure scholarship, without the least material object. 

Another institution of which Winconsin has reason 
to be proud is the State Historical Society — a corpo- 
ration (dating from 1853) with perpetual succession, 
supported by an annual aj^propriation of five thousand 
dollars, with provisions for printing the reports of the 
society and the catalogues of the library. It is housed 
in the Capitol. The society has accumulated inter- 
esting historical portraits, cabinets of antiquities, nat- 
ural history, and curiosities, a collection of copper, 
and some valuable MSS. for the library. The library 
is one of the best historical collections in the country. 
The excellence of it is largely due to Lyman C. Dra- 
per, LL.D., who was its secretary for thirty -three 
years, but who began as early as 1834 to gather facts 
and materials for border history and biography, and 
who had in 1852 accumulated thousands of manu- 
scripts and historical statements, the nucleus of the 
present splendid library, which embraces rare and val- 
uable works relating to the history of nearly every 
State. This material is arranged by States, and read- 
ily accessible to the student. Indeed, there are few 
historical libraries in the country where historical re- 
search in American subjects can be better prosecuted 
than in this. The library began in January, 1854, 



Economic and Social Tojjics. 173 

with fifty volumes. In January, 1887, it had 57,935 
vohimes and 60,731 pamphlets and documents, making 
a total of 118,660 titles. 

There is a large law library in the State-house, the 
University has a fair special library for the students, 
and in the city is a good public circulating library, 
free, supported by a tax, and much used. For a young 
city, it is therefore very well off for books. 

Madison is not only an educational centre, but an 
intelligent city; the people read and no doubt buy 
books, but they do not support book -stores. The 
shops where books are sold are variety - shops, deal- 
ing in stationery, artists' materials, cheap pictures, 
bric-a-brac. Books are of minor importance, and but 
few are " kept in stock." Indeed, bookselling is not 
a profitable part of the business; it does not pay to 
" handle " books, or to keep the run of new publica- 
tions, or to keep a supply of standard works. In this 
the shops of Madison are not peculiar. It is true all 
over the West, except in two or three large cities, and 
true, perhaps, not quite so generally in the East; the 
book-shops are not the literary and intellectual centres 
they used to be. 

There are several reasons given for this discour- 
aging state of the book-trade. Perhaps it is true that 
people accustomed to newspapers full of " selections," 
to the flimsy publications found on the cheap count- 
ers, and to the magazines, do not buy " books that are 
books," except for " furnishing ;" that they depend 
more and more upon the circulating libraries for any- 
thing that costs more than an imj)orted cigar or half 
a pound of candy. The local dealers say that the 
system of the great publishing houses is unsatisfacto- 



IT-i South and West. 

ry as to prices and discounts. Private persons can 
get the same discounts as the dealers, and can very 
likely, by ordering a list, buy more cheaj^ly than of 
the local bookseller, and therefore, as a matter of busi- 
ness, he says that it does not pay to keep books ; he 
gives up trying to sell them, and turns his attention 
to " varieties." Another reason for the decline in the 
trade may be in the fact that comparatively few book- 
sellers are men of taste in letters, men who read, or 
keep the run of new publications. If a retail grocer 
knew no more of his business than many booksellers 
know of theirs, he would certainly fail. It is a pity 
on all accounts that the book-trade is in this condition. 
A bookseller in any community, if he is a man of lit- 
erary culture, and has a love of books and knowledge 
of them, can do a great deal for the cultivation of the 
public taste. His shop becomes a sort of intellectual 
centre of the town. If the public find there an at- 
mosphere of books, and are likely to have their Avants 
met for publications new or rare, they will generally 
sustain the shop; at least this is my observation. Still, 
I should not like to attempt to say whether the falling 
off in the retail book-trade is due to want of skill in 
the sellers, to the publishing machinery, or to public 
indiiference. The subject is worthy the attention of 
experts. It is undeniably important to maintain ev- 
erywhere these little depots of intellectual supply. In 
a town new to him the visitor is apt to estimate the 
taste, the culture, the refinement, as well as the wealth 
of the town, by its shops. The stock in the dry goods 
and fancy stores tells one thing, that in the art-stores 
another thing, that in the book-stores another thing, 
about the inhabitants. The West, even on the remote 



Economic and Social Topics. 175 

frontiers, is full of magnificent stores of goods, telling 
of taste as well as luxury; the book -shops are the 
poorest of all. 

The impression of the North-west, thus far seen, is 
that of tremendous energy, material refinement, much 
open - mindedness, considerable self - appreciation, un- 
common sagacity in meeting new problems, generous 
hospitality, the Old Testament notion of possessing 
this world, rather more recognition of the pecuniary 
as the only success than exists in the East and South, 
intense national enthusiasm, and unblushing and most 
welcome "Americanism." 

In these sketchy observations on the North-west 
nothing has seemed to me more interesting and im- 
portant than the agricultural changes going on in 
eastern Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. In the 
vast wheat farms, as well as in the vast cattle ranges, 
there is an element of speculation, if not of gambling, 
of the chance of immense profits or of considerable 
loss, that is neither conducive to the stable prosperity 
nor to the moral soundness of a State. In the break- 
ing up of the great farms, and in the introduction of 
varied agriculture and cattle-raising on a small scale, 
there Avill not be so many great fortunes made, but 
each State will be richer as a whole, and less liable to 
yearly fluctuations in prosperity. But the gain most 
worth considering will be in the home life and the 
character of the citizens. The best life of any com- 
munity depends upon varied industries. No part of 
the United States has ever prospered, as regards the 
well-being of the mass of the people, that relied upon 
the production of a single staple. 



IX. 
CHICAGO. 

[iTirst i3aper.] 

Chicago is becoming modest. Perhaps the inhab- 
itants may still be able to conceal their modesty, but 
nevertheless they feel it. The explanation is simple. 
The city has grown not only beyond the most san- 
guine expectations of those who indulged in the most 
inflated hope of its future, but it has grown be3'ond 
what they said they expected. This gives the citi- 
zens pause — as it might an eagle that laid a roc's egg. 

The fact is, Chicago has become an independent 
organism, growing by a combination of forces and op- 
portunities, beyond the contrivance of any combination 
of men to help or hinder, beyond the need of flaming 
circulars and reports of boards of trade, and process 
pictures. It has passed the danger or the fear of 
rivalry, and reached the point where the growth of 
any other portion of the great North-west, or of any 
city in it (whatever rivalry that city may show in in- 
dustries or in commerce), is in some way a contribu- 
tion to the power and wealth of Chicago. To them 
that have shall be given. Cities, under favoring con- 
ditions for local expansion, which reach a certain 
amount of population and wealth, grow by a kind of 
natural increment, the law of attraction, very well 
known in human nature, which draws a person to an 



Chicago, 177 

active city of two hundred thousand rather than to a 
stagnant city of one hundred thousand. And it is a 
fortunate thing for civilization that this attraction is 
almost as strong to men of letters as it is to men of 
affairs. Chicago has, it seems to me, only recently 
turned this point of assured expansion, and, as I in- 
timated, the inhabitants have hardly yet become ac- 
customed to this idea ; but I believe that the time is 
near when they will be as indifferent to what stran- 
gers think of Chicago as the ]N"ew- Yorkers are to what 
strangers think of New York. New York is to-day 
the only American city free from this anxious note 
of provincialism — though in Boston it rather takes 
the form of pity for the unenlightened man who 
doubts its superiority ; but the impartial student of 
Chicago to-day can see plenty of signs of the sure 
growth of this metropolitan indifference. And yet 
there is still here enough of the old Chicago stamp to 
make the place interesting. 

It is everything in getting a point of view. Last 
summer a lady of New Orleans who had never before 
been out of her native French city, and who would 
look upon the whole North with the impartial eyes of 
a foreigner — and more than that, with Continental 
eyes — visited Chicago, and afterwards New York. 
"Which city did you like best?" I asked, without 
taking myself seriously in the question. To my sur- 
prise, she hesitated. This hesitation was fatal to all 
my preconceived notions. It mattered not thereafter 
which she preferred : she had hesitated. She was 
actually comparing Chicago to New York in her mind, 
as one might compare Paris and London. The au- 
dacity of the comparison I saw was excused by its in- 
12 



178 South and West. 

nocence. I confess that it had never occurred to me 
to think of Chicago in that Continental light. " Well," 
she said, not seeing at all the humor of my remark, 
"Chicago seems to me to have finer buildings and 
residences, to be the more beautiful city ; but of 
course there is more in New York ; it is a greater 
city ; and I should prefer to live there for what I 
want." This naive observation set me thinking, and 
I wondered if there was a point of view, say that of 
divine omniscience and fairness, in which Chicago 
would appear as one of the great cities of the world, 
in fact a metropolis, by-and-by to rival in population 
and wealth any city of the seaboard. It has certainly 
better commercial advantages, so far as water com- 
munication and railways go, than Paris or Pekin or 
Berlin, and a territory to supply and receive from in- 
finitely vaster, richer, and more promising than either. 
This territory will have many big cities, but in the 
nature of things only one of surpassing importance. 
And taking into account its geographical position — a 
thousand miles from the Atlantic seaboard on the 
one side, and from the mountains on the other, with 
the acknowledged tendency of people and of money 
to it as a continental centre— it seems to me that Chi- 
cago is to be that one. 

The growth of Chicago is one of the marvels of the 
world. I do not wonder that it is incomprehensible 
even to those who have seen it year by year. As I 
remember it in 1860, it was one of the shabbiest and 
most unattractive cities of about a hundred thousand 
inhabitants anywhere to be found ; but even then it 
had more than trebled its size in ten years ; the 
streets were mud sloughs, the sidewalks were a series 



Chicago, 179 

of stairs and more or loss rotten planks, half the town 
was in process of elevation above the tadpole level, 
and a considerable part of it was on wheels — the mov- 
ing house being about the only wheeled vehicle that 
could get around with any comfort to the passengers. 
The west side was a straggling shanty - town, the 
north side was a country village with two or three 
"aristocratic" houses occupying a square, the south 
side had not a handsome business building in it, nor a 
public edifice of any merit except a couple of churches, 
but there were a few pleasant residences on Michigan 
Avenue fronting the encroaching lake, and on Wa- 
bash Avenue. Yet I am not sure that even then the 
exceedingly busy and excited traders and speculators 
did not feel that the town was more important than 
New York. For it had a great business. Aside from 
its real estate operations, its trade that year was set 
down at $97,000,000, embracing its dealing in prod- 
uce, its wholesale supply business, and its manufact- 
uring. 

No one then, however, would have dared to pre- 
dict that the value of trade in 1887 would be, as it 
was, $1,103,000,000. Nor could any one have believed 
that the population of 100,000 would reach in 1887 
nearly 800,000 (estimated 782,644), likely to reach in 
1888, with the annexation of contiguous villages that 
have become physically a part of the city, the amount 
of 900,000. Growing at its usual rate for several 
years past, the city is certain in a couple of years to 
count its million of people. And there is not prob- 
ably anywhere congregated a more active and ag- 
gressive million, with so great a proportion of young, 
ambitious blood. Other figures keep pace with those 



ISO Sout/i and Wisf. 

of trade and population. I will mention only one or 
two of them here. The national banks, in 1SS7, had 
a capital o( $ir>,800,000, in whieh the deposits were 
$SO,4To,7U>, the loans and diseounts ^^Oa,! 1 0,8:11, the 
surplus and profits 8t.>,o-JO,5oO. The First "National is, 
I believe, the second or third largest banking- house in 
the country, having- a deposit aeeount o( over twenty- 
two millions. The tigures given only inelude the na- 
tional banks; add to these the private banks, and the 
deposits of Chicago in 1887 were ^lOo, 007,000. The 
aggregate bank clearings of the city were $2,00^,210,- 
210.(.U\ an increase of 14 per cent, over 1880. It should 
be noted that there were only twenty-one banks in the 
clearing house (with an aggregate capital and surplus 
of $28,o 14,000), and that the fewer the banks the small- 
er the total clearings will be. The aggregate Board of 
Trade clearings for 1887 were $78,1 70,800. In the year 
1880 Chicago imported merchandise entered for con- 
sumption to the value of {?ll,o74,440, and paid $4,o40,- 
237 duties on it. I did not intend to go into statistics, 
but these and a few other tigures will give some idea 
of the volume of business in this new city. I foinid 
on inquiry that — (.nving to legislation that need not 
be gone into — there are few savings-banks, and the 
visible savings of labor cut a small tigure in this way. 
The explanation is that there are several important 
loan and building associations. Money is received on 
deposit in small amounts, and loaned at a good rate 
of interest to those wishing to build or buy houses, 
the latter paying in small instahnents. The result is 
that these loan institutions have been very profitable 
to those who have put money in them, and that the 
laborers who have borrowed to build have also been 



Chicago. 181 

bonotitod by puttinii; all their savings into honsos. I 
beliovo tliore is no other hirgc city, cxccj)! Pliihidol- 
})liia. })orha|>s, Avherc so largo a proportion of the in- 
habitants own the honses they live in. There is no 
better ])rin'ention of the sj)rea(l of anarehieal notions 
and eonununist foolishness than this. 

It is an item of interest that the wholesale dry- 
goods jobbing establishments increased their business 
in 1887 1-^ ])er cent, over 1880. Five honses have a 
capital of 80,000,000, and the sales in 1887 were near- 
ly $74,000,000. And it is worth special mention that 
one man in diicago, IMarshall Field, is the largest 
wholesale and retail dry-goods merchant in the world. 
In his retail shop and wholesale store there are 3000 
employes on the pay-roll. As to being first in liis 
specialty, the same may be said of Philip I). Armour, 
who not only distances all rivals in the world as a 
})acker, but no doubt also as a merchant of such prod- 
ucts as the hog contributes to the support of life. His 
sales in one year have been over Ji^5 1,000,000. The city 
has also the distinction of having anu>ng its citizens 
Henry W. Jving, the largest dealer, in establishments 
here and elsewhere, in clothing in the world. 

In nothing has the growth of Chicago been more 
marked in the past five years than in manufactures. 
I cannot go into the details of all tlie products, but 
the totals of manufacture for 1887 were, in 'jaOO iirms, 
$113,000,000 capital employed, 134,015 workers, $74,- 
507,000 ]>aid in wages, and the value of the })roduct 
was 1403,100,500 — an increase of product over 1880 of 
about 15;V jier cent. A surprishig item in this is tho 
book and publishing business. The increase of sales of 
books in 1887 over 1880 was 20^ per cent. Tho whole- 



182 South and West 

sale sales for 1887 are estimated at $10,000,000. It 
is now claimed that as a book-publishing centre Chi- 
cago ranks second only to New York, and that in the 
issue of subscription -books it does more business than 
New York, Boston, and Philadelphia combined. In re- 
gard to musical instruments the statement is not less 
surprising. In 1887 the sales of pianos amounted to 
about 12,600,000— a gain of $300,000 over 1886. My 
authority for this, and for some, but not all, of the 
other figures given, is the Trihime, which says that 
Chicago is not only the largest reed-organ market in 
the world, but that more organs are manufactured 
here than in any other city in Europe or America. 
The sales for 1887 were $2,000,000 — an increase over 
1886 of $500,000. There were $1,000,000 worth of 
small musical instruments sold, and of sheet music 
and music-books a total of $450,000. This speaks 
well for the cultivation of musical taste in the West, 
especially as there was a marked improvement in the 
class of the music bought. 

The product of the iron manufactures in 1887, in- 
cluding rolling-mills ($23,952,000) and founderies ($10,- 
000,000), was $61,187,000 against $46,790,000 in 1886, 
and the wages paid in iron and steel work was $14,- 
899,000. In 1887 there were erected 4833 buildings, 
at a reported cost of $19,778,100 — a few more build- 
ings, but yet at nearly two millions less cost, than in 
1886. A couple of items interested me: that Chica- 
go made in 1887 $900,000 worth of toys and $500,000 
worth of perfumes. The soap-makers waged a gal- 
lant but entirely unsuccessful war against the soot and 
smoke of the town in producing $6,250,000 Avorth of 
soap and candles. I do not see it mentioned, but I 



Chicago, 183 

should think the laundry business in Chicago would 
be the most profitable one at present. 

Without attempting at all to set forth the business 
of Chicago in detail, a few more figures will help to 
indicate its volume. At the beginning of 1887 the 
storage capacity for grain in 29 elevators was 27,025,- 
000 bushels. The total receipts of flour and grain in 
1882, '3, '4, '5, and '6, in bushels, were respectively, 
126,155,483, 164,924,732, 159,561,474, 156,408,228, 
151,932,995. In 1887 the receipts in bushels were: 
flour, 6,873,544; wheat, 21,848,251 ; corn, 51,578,410; 
oats, 45,750,842; rye, 852,726; barley, 12,476,547— 
total, 139,380,320. It is useless to go into details of 
the meat products, but interesting to know that in 
1886 Chicago shipped 310,039,600 pounds of lard and 
673,496,012 pounds of dressed beef. 

I was surprised at the amount of the lake com- 
merce, the railway traffic (nearly 50,000 miles tribu- 
tary to the city) making so much more show. In 
1882 the tonnage of vessels clearing this port was 
4,904,999; in 1886 it was 3,950,762. The report of 
the Board of Trade for 1886 says the arrivals and 
clearances, foreign and coastwise, for this port for 
the year ending June 30th were 22,096, which was 
869 more than at the ports of Baltimore, Boston, New 
Orleans, Philadelphia, Portland and Falmouth, and San 
Francisco combined; 315 more than at New York, New 
Orleans, Portland and Falmouth, and San Francisco; 
and 100 more than at New York, Baltimore, and Port- 
land and Falmouth. It will not be overlooked that 
this lake commerce is training a race of hardy sailors, 
who would come to the front in case of a naval war, 
though they might have to go out on rafts. 



18i South and West. 

In 1888 Chicago is a magnificent city. Although 
it has been incorporated fifty years, during which pe- 
riod its accession of population has been rapid and 
steady — hardly checked by the devastating fires of 
1871 and 1874 — its metropolitan character and appear- 
ance is the work of less than fifteen years. There is 
in history no parallel to this product of a freel}^ act- 
ing democracy: not St. Petersburg rising out uf the 
marshes at an imperial edict, nor Berlin, the magic 
creation of a consolidated empire and a Caesar's 230w- 
er. The north-side village has become a city of broad 
streets, running northward to the parks, lined with 
handsome residences interspersed with stately man- 
sions of most varied and agreeable architecture, mar- 
red by very little that is bizarre and pretentious — a 
region of churches and club-houses and public build- 
ings of importance. The west side, the largest sec- 
tion, and containing more population than the other 
two divisions combined, stretching out over the prai- 
rie to a horizon fringed w^tli villages, expanding in 
three directions, is more mediocre in buildings, but im- 
pressive in its vastness; and the stranger driving out 
the stately avenue of Washington some four miles to 
Garfield Park will be astonished by the evidences of 
wealth and the vigor of the city expansion. 

But it is the business portion of the south side that 
is the miracle of the time, the solid creation of ener- 
gy and capital since the fire — the square mile contain- 
ing the Post-ofiice and City Hall, the giant hotels, the 
opera-houses and theatres, the Board of Trade build- 
ing, the many-storied ofiices, the great shops, the club- 
houses, the vast retail and wholesale warehouses. This 
area has the advantage of some other great business 



Chicago » 185 

centres in having broad streets at right angles, but 
with all this openness for movement, the throng of 
passengers and traffic, the intersecting street and cable 
railways, the loads of freight and the crush of car- 
riages, the life and hurry and excitement are sufficient 
to satisfy the most eager lover of metropolitan pande- 
monium. Unfortunately for a clear comprehension of 
it, the manufactories vomit dense clouds of bitumi- 
nous coal smoke, which settle in a black mass in this 
part of the town, so that one can scarcely see across 
the streets in a damp day, and the huge buildings loom 
up in the black sky in ghostly dimness. The climate 
of Chicago, though some ten degrees warmer than the 
average of its immediately tributary tcrritor}^, is a 
harsh one, and in the short winter days the centre of 
the city is not only black, but damp and chilly. In 
some of the November and December days I could 
without any stretch of the imagination fancy myself iu 
London. On a Sunday, when business gives place to 
amusement and religion, the stately city is seen in all 
its fine proportions. No other city in the Union can 
show business warehouses and offices of more archi- 
tectural nobility. The mind inevitably goes to Flor- 
ence for comparison with the structures of the Medi- 
cean merchant princes. One might name the Pullman 
Building for offices as an example, and the wholesale 
warehouse of Marshall Field, the work of that truly 
original American architect, Richardson, which in mas- 
siveness, simplicity of lines, and admirable blending of 
artistic beauty with adaptability to its purpose, seems 
to me unrivalled in this country. A few of these build- 
ings are exceptions to the general style of architect- 
ure, which is only good of its utilitarian American 



186 South and West. 

kind, but they give distinction to the town, and I am 
sure are j^rophetic of the concrete form the wealth of 
the city will take. The visitor is likely to be surprised 
at the number and size of the structures devoted to 
offices, and to think, as he sees some of them unfilled, 
that the business is overdone. At any given moment 
it may be, but the demand for " offices " is always sur- 
prising to those who pay most attention to this sub- 
ject, and I am told that if the erection of office build- 
ings should cease for a year, the demand would pass 
beyond the means of satisfying it. 

Leaving the business portion of the south side, the 
city runs in apparently limitless broad avenues south- 
ward into suburban villages and a region thickly pop- 
ulated to the Indiana line. The continuous slightly 
curving lake front of the city is about seven miles, 
pretty solidly occupied with houses. The Michigan 
Avenue of 1860, with its wooden fronts and cheap 
boarding-houses, has taken on quite another appear- 
ance, and extends its broad way in unbroken lines of 
fine residences five miles, which will be six miles next 
summer, when its opening is completed to the entrance 
of Washington Park. I do not know such another 
street in the world. In the evening the converging 
lines of gas lamps offer a prospective of unequalled 
beauty of its kind. The south parks are reached now 
by turning either into the Drexel Boulevard or the 
Grand Boulevard, a magnificent avenue a mile in 
length, tree-planted, gay with flower-beds in the sea- 
son, and crowded in the sleighing-time with fast teams 
and fancy turnouts. 

This leads me to speak of another feature of Chica- 
go, which has no rival in this country : I mean the 



Chicago. ' 187 

facility for pleasure driving and riding. Michigan 
Avenue from the mouth of the river, the centre of 
town, is macadamized. It and the other avenues im- 
mediately connected with the park system are not in- 
cluded in the city street department, but are under 
the care of the Commissioners of Parks. No traffic is 
permitted on them, and consequently they are in su- 
perb condition for driving, summer and winter. The 
whole length of Michigan Avenue you will never see 
a loaded team. These roads — that is, Michigan Ave- 
nue and the others of the park system, and the park 
drives — are superb for driving or riding, perfectly 
made for drainage and permanency, with a top-dressing 
of pulverized granite. The cost of the Michigan Av- 
enue drive was two hundred thousand dollars a mile. 
The cost of the parks and boulevards in each of the 
three divisions is met by a tax on the property in that 
division. The tax is considerable, but the wise liber- 
ality of the citizens has done for the town what only 
royalty usually accomplishes — given it magnificent 
roads; and if good roads are a criterion of civiliza- 
tion, Chicago must stand very high. But it needed a 
community with a great deal of daring and confidence 
in the future to create this park system. 

One in the heart of the city has not to drive three 
or four miles over cobble - stones and ruts to get to 
good driving-ground. When he has entered Michi- 
gan Avenue he need not pull rein for twenty to thirty 
miles. This is almost literally true as to extent, with- 
out counting the miles of fine drives in the parks ; 
for the city proper is circled by great parks, already 
laid out as pleasure-grounds, tree-planted and beauti- 
fied to a high degree, although they are nothing to 



188 South and West. 

what cultivation will make them in ten j^ears more. 
On the lake shore, at the south, is Jackson Park; next 
is Washington Park, twice as large as Central Park, 
New York ; then, farther to the west, and north, 
Douglas Park and Garfield Park ; then Humboldt 
Park, until we come round to Lincoln Park, on the 
lake shore on the north side. These parks are all con- 
nected by broad boulevards, some of which are not 
yet fully developed, thus forming a continuous park 
drive, with enough of nature and enough of varied 
architecture for variety, unsurpassed, I should say, in 
the world within any city limits. Washington Park, 
with a slightly rolling surface and beautiful landscape- 
gardening, has not only fine drive-ways, but a splendid 
road set apart for horsemen. This is a dirt road, al- 
ways well sprinkled, and the equestrian has a chance 
besides of a gallop over springy turf. Water is now 
so abundantly provided that this park is kept green in 
the driest season. From anywhere in the south side 
one may mount his horse or enter his carriage for a 
turn of fifteen or twenty miles on what is equivalent 
to a country road — that is to say, an English country 
road. Of the effect of this facility on social life I 
shall have occasion to speak. On the lake side of 
Washington Park are the grounds of the Washington 
Park Racing Club, with a splendid track, and stables 
and other facilities which, I am told, exceed anything 
of the kind in the country. The club-house itself is 
very handsome and commodious, is open to the mem- 
bers and their families summer and winter, and makes 
a favorite rendezvous for that part of society which 
shares its privileges. Besides its large dining and 
dancing halls, it has elegant apartments set apart for 



Chicago. 189 

ladies. In winter its hospitable rooms and big wood 
fires are very attractive after a zero drive. 

Almost equal facility for driving and riding is had 
on the north side by taking the lake-shore drive to 
Lincoln Park. Too much cannot be said of the beau- 
ty of this drive along the curving shore of an inland 
sea, ever attractive in the play of changing lights and 
colors, and beginning to be fronted by palatial houses 
— a foretaste of the coming Venetian variety and 
splendor. The park itself, dignified by the Lincoln 
statue, is an exquisite piece of restful landscape, look- 
ed over by a thickening assemblage of stately resi- 
dences. It is a quarter of spacious elegance. 

One hardly knows how to speak justly of either the 
physical aspect or the social life of Chicago, the i3res- 
ent performance suggesting such promise and imme- 
diate change. The excited admiration waits a little 
upon expectation. I should like to see it in five years 
— in ten years ; it is a formative period, but one of 
such excellence of execution that the imagination takes 
a very high flight in anticipating the result of another 
quarter of a century. What other city has begun so 
nobly or has planned so liberally for metropolitan so- 
lidity, elegance, and recreation ? What other has 
such magnificent avenues and boulevards, and such a 
system of parks ? The boy is born here who will see 
the town expanded far beyond these splendid pleas- 
ure-grounds, and what is now the circumference of 
the city will be to Chicago what the vernal gardens 
from St. James to Hampton are to London. This an- 
ticipation hardly seems strange when one remembers 
what Chicago was fifteen years ago. 

Architecturally, Chicago is more interesting than 



190 South and West 

many older cities. Its Tvealth and opportunity for 
fine building coming when our national taste is begin- 
ning to be individual, it has escaped the monotony 
and mediocrity in which New York for so many years 
put its money, and out of the sameness of which it is 
escaping in spots. Having also plenty of room, Chi- 
cago has been able to avoid the block system in its 
residences, and to give play to variety and creative 
genius. It is impossible to do much with the interior 
of a house in a block, however much you may load the 
front with ornament. Confined to a long parallelo- 
gram, and limited as to light and air, neither comfort 
nor individual taste can be consulted or satisfied. 
Chicago is a city of detached houses, in the humbler 
quarters as well as in the magnificent avenues, and 
the effect is home-like and beautiful at the same time. 
There is great variety — stone, brick, and wood inter- 
mingled, plain and ornamental ; but drive where you 
will in the favorite residence parts of the vast city, 
you will be continually surprised with the sight of 
noble and artistic houses and homes displaying taste 
as well as luxury. In addition to the business and 
public buildings of which I spoke, there are several, 
like the Art Museum, the Studebaker Building, and 
the new Auditorium, which would be conspicuous and 
admired in any city in the world. The city is rich in 
a few specimens of private houses by Mr. Richardson 
(whose loss to the country is still apparently irrepara- 
ble), houses worth a long journey to see, so simple, so 
noble, so full of comfort, sentiment, unique, having 
what may be called a charming personality. As to 
interiors, there has been plenty of money spent in 
Chicago in mere show ; but, after all, I know of no 



Chicago. 191 

other city that has more character and individuality 
in its interiors, more evidences of personal refinement 
and taste. There is, of course— Boston knows that — 
a grace and richness in a dwelling in which genera- 
tions have accumulated the best fruits of wealth and 
cultivation; but any tasteful stranger here, I am sure, 
will be surprised to find in a city so new so many 
homes pervaded by the atmosphere of books and art 
and refined sensibility, due, I imagine, mainly to the 
taste of the women, for while there are plenty of men 
here who have taste, there are very few who have lei- 
sure to indulge it; and I doubt if there was ever any- 
where a livable house — a man can build a palace, but 
he cannot make a home — that was not the creation of 
a refined woman. I do not mean to say that Chicago 
is not still very much the victim of the upholsterer, 
and that the eye is not offended by a good deal that 
is gaudy and pretentious, but there is so much here 
that is in exquisite taste that one has a hopeful heart 
about its future. Everybody is not yet educated up 
to the " Richardson houses," but nothing is more cer- 
tain than that they will powerfully influence all the 
future architecture of the town. 

Perhaps there never was before such an opportunity 
to study the growth of an enormous city, physically 
and socially, as is offered now in Chicago, where the 
development of half a century is condensed into a dec- 
ade. In one respect it differs from all other cities of 
anything like its size. It is not only surrounded by a 
complete net-w^ork of railways, but it is permeated by 
them. The converging lines of twenty-one (I think 
it is) railways paralleling each other or criss-crossing 
in the suburbs concentrate upon fewer tracks as they 



192 South and West. 

enter the dense part of the city, but they literally sur- 
round it, and actually pierce its heart. So complete 
is this environment and interlacing that you cannot 
enter the city from any direction without encountering 
a net-work of tracks. None of the water-front, except 
a slrip on the north side, is free from them. The 
finest residence part of the south side, including the 
boulevards and parks, is surrounded and cut by them. 
There are a few viaducts, but for the most part the 
tracks occupy streets, and the crossings are at grade. 
Along the Michigan Avenue water-front and down 
the lake shore to Hjale Park, on the Illinois Central 
and the Michigan Central and their connections, the 
foreign and local trains pass incessantly (I believe over 
sixty a day), and the Illinois crosses above Sixteenth 
Street, cutting all the great southward avenues ; and 
farther down, the tracks run between Jackson Park 
and Washington Park, crossing at grade the 500-feet- 
wide boulevard which connects these great parks and 
makes them one. These tracks and grade crossings, 
from which so few parts of the city are free, are a se- 
rious evil and danger, and the annoyance is increased 
by the multiplicity of street railways, and by the swift- 
ly running cable-cars, which are a constant source of 
alarm to the timid. The railways present a difficult 
problem. The town covers such a vast area (always 
extending in a ratio that cannot be calculated) that to 
place all the passenger stations outside would be a 
great inconvenience, to unite the lines in a single sta- 
tion probably impracticable. In time, however, the 
roads must come in on elevated viaducts, or concen- 
trate in three or four stations which communicate with 
the central parts of the town by elevated roads. 



Chicago. 193 

This state of things arose from the fact that the 
railways antedated, and we may say made, the town, 
which has grown up along their lines. To a town of 
pure business, transportation was the first requisite, 
and the newer roads have been encouraged to pene- 
trate as far into the city as they could. Now that it 
is necessary to make it a city to live in safely and 
agreeably, the railways are regarded from another 
point of view. I suppose a sociologist would make 
some reflections on the effect of such a thorough per- 
meation of tracks, trains, engines, and traffic upon the 
temperament of a town, the action of these exciting 
and irritating causes upon its nervous centres. Living 
in a big railway-station must have an effect on the 
nerves. At present this seems a legitimate part of 
the excited activity of the city ; but if it continues, 
with the rapid increase of wealth and the growth of a 
leisure class, the inhabitants who can afford to get 
away will live here only the few months necessary 
to do their business and take a short season of social 
gayety, and then go to quieter places early in the 
spring and for the summer months. 

It is at this point of view that the value of the 
park system appears, not only as a relief, as easily ac- 
cessible recreation - grounds for the inhabitants in 
every part of the city, but as an element in society life. 
These parks, which I have already named, contain 
1742 acres. The two south parks, connected so as to 
be substantially one, have 957 acres. Their great con- 
necting boulevards are interfered with somewhat by 
railway-tracks, and none of them, except Lincoln, can 
be reached without crossing tracks on which locomo- 
tives run, yet, as has been said, the most important of 
13 



194 South and West. 

them are led to by good driving-roads from the heart 
of the city. They have excellent roads set apart for 
equestrians as well as for driving. These facilities 
induce the keeping of horses, the setting up of fine 
equipages, and a display for which no other city has 
better opportunity. This cannot but have an appre- 
ciable effect upon the growth of luxury and display 
in this direction. Indeed, it is already true that the 
city keeps more private carriages — for the pleasure 
not only of the rich, but of the well-to-do — in propor- 
tion to its population, than any other large city I 
know. These broad thoroughfares, kept free from 
traffic, furnish excellent sleighing when it does not 
exist in the city streets generally, and in the summer 
unequalled avenues for the show of wealth and beauty 
and style. In a few years the turnouts on the Grand 
Boulevard and the Lincoln Park drive will be worth 
going far to see for those who admire — and who does 
not? for, the w^orld over, wealth has no spectacle more 
attractive to all classes — fine horses and the splendor 
of moving equii^ages. And here is no cramped mile 
or two for parade, like most of the fashionable drives 
of the world, but space inviting healthful exercise as 
well as display. These broad avenues and park out- 
looks, with ample ground-room, stimulate architectur- 
al rivalry, and this opportunity for driving and riding 
and being on view cannot but affect very strongly the 
social tone. The foresight of the busy men who 
planned this park system is already vindicated. The 
public appreciate their privileges. On fair days the 
driving avenues are thronged. One Sunday afternoon 
in January, when the sleighing was good, some one 
estimated that there were as many as ten thousand 



Chicago. 195 

teams flying up and down Michigan Avenue and the 
Grand Boulevard. This was, of course, an over-esti- 
mate, but the throng made a ten-thousand impression 
on the mind. Perhaps it was a note of Western in- 
dependence that a woman was here and there seen 
" speeding " a fast horse, in a cutter, alone. 

I suppose that most of these people had been to 
church in the morning, for Chicago, which does every- 
thing it puts its hand to with tremendous energy, is 
a church-going city, and I believe presents some con- 
trast to Cincinnati in this respect. Religious, mission, 
and Sunday-school work is very active, churches are 
many, whatever the liberality of the creeds of a ma- 
jority of them, and there are several congregations of 
over two thousand people. One vast music-hall and 
one theatre are thronged Sunday after Sunday with 
organized, vigorous, worshipful congregations. Be- 
sides these are the Sunday meetings for ethical cult- 
ure and Christian science. It is true that many of 
the theatres are open as on week-days, and there is a 
vast foreign population that takes its day of rest in 
idleness or- base-ball and garden amusements, but the 
prevailing aspect of the city is that of Sunday observ- 
ance. There is a good deal of wholesome New Eng- 
land in its tone. And it Avelcomes any form of activ- 
ity — orthodoxy, liberalism, revivals, ethical culture. 

A special interest in Chicago at the moment is be- 
cause it is forming — full of contrasts and of promise, 
palaces and shanties side by side. Its forces are gath- 
ered and accumulating, but not assimilated. What a 
mass of crude, undigested material it has ! In one 
region on the west side are twenty thousand Bohe- 
mians and Pples ; the street signs are all foreign and 



196 South and West. 

of unpronounceable names — a physically strong, but 
mentally and morally brutal, people for the most part ; 
the adults generally do not speak English, and clan- 
ning as they do, they probably never will. There is 
no hope that this generation will be intelligent Amer- 
ican citizens, or be otherwise than the j^olitical prey 
of demagogues. But their children are in the excel- 
lent public schools, and will take in American ideas 
and take on American ways. Still, the mill has about 
as much grist as it can grind at present. 

Social life is, speaking generally, as unformed, un- 
selected, as the city — that is, more fluid and undeter- 
mined than in Eastern large cities. That is merely to 
say, however, that while it is American, it is young. 
When you come to individuals, the people in society 
are largely from the East, or have Eastern connec- 
tions that determine their conduct. For twenty years 
the great universities, Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Prince- 
ton, and the rest, have been pouring in their young 
men here. There is no better element in the world, 
and it is felt in every pulse of the town. Young 
couples marry and come here from every sort of 
Eastern circle. But the town has grown so fast, and 
so many new people have come into the ability sud- 
denly to spend money in fine houses and equipages, 
that the people do not know each other. You may 
drive past miles of good houses, with a man who has 
grown up with the town, who cannot tell you who 
any of the occupants of the houses are. Men know 
each other on change, in the courts, in business, and 
are beginning to know each other in clubs, but socie- 
ty has not got itself sorted out and arranged, or dis- 
covered its elements. This is a metropolitan trait, it 



Chicago. 197 

is true, but the condition is socially very different 
from what it is in New York or Boston ; the small 
village associations survive a little yet, struggling 
against the territorial distances, but the social mass 
is still unorganized, although "society" is a promi- 
nent feature in the newspapers. Of course it is un- 
derstood that there are people " in society," and din- 
ners, and all that, in nowise different from the same 
people and events the world over. 

A striking feature of the town is " youth," visible 
in social life as well as in business. An Eastern man 
is surprised to see so many young men in responsible 
positions, at the head, or taking the managing oar, in 
great moneyed institutions, in railway corporations, 
and in societies of charity and culture. A young 
man, graduate of the city high-school, is at the same 
time president of a prominent bank, president of the 
Board of Trade, and president of the Art Institute. 
This youthful spirit must be contagious, for appa- 
rently the more elderly men do not permit them- 
selves to become old, either in the business or the 
pleasures of life. Everything goes on with youthful 
vim and spirit. 

Next to the youth, and perhaps more noticeable, 
the characteristic feature of Chicago is money-mak- 
ing, and the money power is as obtrusive socially as 
on change. When we come to speak of educational 
and intellectual tendencies, it will be seen how this 
spirit is being at once utilized and mitigated; but for 
the moment money is the recognized power. How 
could it be otherwise? Youth and energy did not 
flock here for pleasure or for society, but simply for 
fortune. And success in money-getting was about 



19S South and West. 

the only one considered. And it is still that by which 
Chicago is chietly known abroad, by that and b}- a 
certain consciousness of it which is noticed. And as 
women reflect social conditions most vividly, it can- 
not be denied that there is a type known in Europe 
and in tlie East as the Chicago young woman, capa- 
ble rather than timid, dashing rather than retiring, 
quite able to take care of herself. But this is not by 
any means an exhaustive account of the Chicago wom- 
an of to-day. 

While it must be said that the men, as a rule, are 
too much absorbed in business to give heed to any- 
thing else, yet even this statement will need more 
qualification than would appear at iirst,when we come 
to consider the educational, industrial, and reforma- 
tory projects. And indeed a veritable exception is 
the Literary Club, of nearly two hundred members, a 
mingling of business and professional men, who have 
fine rooms in the Art Building, and meet weekly for 
papers and discussions. It is not in every city that 
an equal number of busy men will give the time to 
this sort of intellectual recreation. The energy here 
is superabundant; in whatever direction it is exerted 
it is veTy etfective; and it may be said, in the lan- 
ffuasce of the street, that if the men of Chicao;o seri- 
ously take hold of culture, they will make it hum. 

Still it remains true here, as elsewhere in the United 
States, that women are in advance in the intellectual 
revival. One cannot yet predict what will be the re- 
sult of this continental furor for literary, scientific, 
and study clubs — in some places in the East the lit- 
erary wave has already risen to the height of the sci- 
entific studv of whist — but for the time beiiii:- Chica- 



Chicago. 199 

go women are in the full swing of literary life. JNIr. 
Browning says that more of his books are sold in 
Chicago than in any other American city. Granting 
some alYectation, some passing fashion, in the Brown- 
ing, Dante, and Shakespeare clubs, I think it is true 
that the Chicago woman, who is imbued with the en- 
ergy of the place, is more serious in her work than 
are women in many other places; at least she is more 
enthusiastic. Her spirit is open, more that of frank 
admiration than of criticism of both literature and of 
authors. This carries her not only further into the 
heart of literature itself, but into a genuine enjoy- 
ment of it — wanting almost to some circles at the 
East, who are too cultivated to admire with warmth 
or to surrender themselves to the delights of learn- 
ing, but find their avocation rather in what may be 
called literary detraction, the spirit being that of dis- 
section of authors and books, much as social gossips 
pick to pieces the characters of those of their own 
set. And one occupation is as good as the other. 
Chicago has some reputation for beauty, for having 
prett}"", dashing, and attractive women; it is as much 
entitled to be considered for its intelligent women who 
are intellectually agreeable. Comparisons are very un- 
safe, but it is my impression that there is more love 
for books in Chicago than in New York society, and 
loss of the critical, nil adtnlrari spirit than in Boston. 
It might be an indication of no value (only of the 
taste of individuals) that books should be the princi- 
pal " favors " at a fashionable german, but there is a 
book-store in the city whose evidence cannot be set 
aside by reference to any freak of fashion. McClurg's 
book -store is a very extensive establishment in all 



200 South and West. 

departments — publishing, manufacturing, retailing, 
wholesaling, and importing. In some respects it has 
not its equal in this country. The book-lover, wheth- 
er he comes from London or New York, will find there 
a stock, constantly sold and constantly replenished, of 
books rare, curious, interesting, that will surprise him. 
The general intelligence that sustains a retail shop 
of this variety and magnitude must be considerable, 
and speaks of a taste for books with which the city 
has not been credited; but the cultivation, the special 
love of books for themselves, which makes possible this 
rich corner of rare and imported books at McClurg's, 
would be noticeable in any city, and women as well 
as men in Chicago are buyers and appreciators of first 
editions, autograph and presentation copies, and books 
valued because they are scarce and rare. 

Chicago has a physical peculiarity that radically 
affects its social condition, and prevents its becoming 
homogeneous. It has one business centre and three 
distinct residence parts, divided by the branching riv- 
er. Communication between the residence sections 
has to be made through the business city, and is fur- 
ther hindered by the bridge crossings, which cause ir- 
ritating delays the greater part of the year. The re- 
sult is that three villages grew up, now become cities 
in size, and each with a peculiar character. The north 
side was originally the more aristocratic, and having 
fewer railways and a less-occupied-with-business lake 
front, was the more agreeable as a place of residence, 
always having the drawback of the bridge crossings to 
the business part. After the great fire, building lots 
were cheaper there than on the south side within rea- 
sonable distance of the active city. It has grown 



Chicago. ' 201 

amazingly, and is beautified by stately houses and fine 
architecture, and would probably still be called the 
more desirable place of residence. But the south side 
has two great advantages — easy access to the business 
centre and to the great southern parks and pleasure- 
grounds. This latter would decide many to live there. 
The vast west side, with its lumber-yards and facto- 
ries, its foreign settlements, and its population out- 
numbering the two other sections combined, is prac- 
tically an unknown region socially to the north side 
and south side. The causes which produced three vil- 
lages surrounding a common business centre will con- 
tinue to operate. The west side will continue to ex- 
pand with cheap houses, or even elegant residences 
on the park avenues — it is the glory of Chicago that 
such a large proportion of its houses are owned by 
their occupants, and that there are few tenement rook- 
eries, and even few gigantic apartment houses — over 
a limitless prairie; the north side will grow in increas- 
ing beauty about Lincoln Park; and the south side will 
more and more gravitate with imposing houses about 
the attractive south parks. Thus the two fashionable 
parts of the city, separated by five, eight, and ten 
miles, will develop a social life of their own, about 
as distinct as New York and Brooklyn. It remains 
to be seen which will call the other " Brooklyn." At 
present these divisions account for much of the dis- 
organization of social life, and prevent that concen- 
tration which seems essential to the highest social de- 
velopment. 

In this situation Chicago is original, as she is in 
many other ways, and it makes one of the interesting 
phases in the guesses at her future. 



X. 
CHICAGO. 

[Seconli ^aper.] 

The country gets its impression of Chicago largely 
from the Chicago newspapers. In my observation, 
the impression is wrong. The press is able, vigorous, 
voluminous, full of enterprise, alert, spirited; its news 
columns are marvellous in quantity, if not in quality ; 
nowhere are important events, public meetings, and 
demonstrations more fully, graphically, and satisfac- 
torily reported; it has keen and competent writers in 
several departments of criticism — theatrical, musical, 
and occasionally literary; independence, with less of 
personal bias than in some other cities ; the editorial 
pages of most of the newspapers are bright, sparkling, 
witty, not seldom spiced with knowing drollery, and 
strong, vivid, well-informed and well-written, in the 
discussion of public questions, with an allowance al- 
ways to be made for the "personal equation" in deal- 
ing with particular men and measures — as little pro- 
vincial in this respect as any press in the country. 

But it lacks tone, elevation of purpose ; it repre- 
sents to the w^orld the inferior elements of a great city 
rather than the better, under a mistaken notion in the 
press and the public, not confined to Chicago, as to 
what is " news." It cannot escape the charge of being 
highly sensational; that is, the elevation into notorie- 



Chicago. 203 

ty of mean persons and mean events by every rhetor- 
ical and pictorial device. Day after day the leading 
news, the most displayed and most conspicuous, will 
be of vulgar men and women, and all the more ex- 
panded if it have in it a spice of scandal. This sort 
of reading creates a diseased appetite, which requires 
a stronger dose daily to satisfy; and people who read 
it lose their relish for the higher, more decent, if less 
piquant, news of the world. Of course the Chicago 
newspapers are not by any means alone in this course; 
it is a disease of the time. Even New York has re- 
cently imitated successfully this feature of what is 
called Western journalism. 

But it is largely from the Chicago newspapers that 
the impression has gone abroad that the city is pre- 
eminent in divorces, pre-eminent in scandals, that its 
society is fast, that it is vulgar and pretentious, that 
its tone is " shoddy," and its culture a sham. The 
laws of Illinois in regard to divorces are not more lax 
than in some Eastern States, and divorces are not 
more numerous there of residents (according to popu- 
lation) than in some Eastern towns ; but while the 
press of the latter give merely an official line to the 
court separations, the Chicago papers parade all the 
details, and illustrate them Avith pictures. Many peo- 
ple go there to get divorces, because they avoid scan- 
dal at their homes, and because the Chicago courts 
offer unusual facilities in being open every month in 
the year. Chicago has a young, mobile population, an 
immense foreign brutal element. I watched for some 
weeks the daily reports of divorces and scandals. Al- 
most without exception they related to the lower, not 
to say the more vulgar, portions of social life. In 



204 Southland West 

several years the city has had, I believe, only two causes 
cel^bres in what is called good society — a remarkable 
record for a city of its size. Of course a city of this 
magnitude and mobility is not free from vice and im- 
morality and fast living; but I am compelled to record 
the deliberate opinion, formed on a good deal of ob- 
servation and inquiry, that the moral tone in Chicago 
society, in all the well-to-do industrious classes which 
give the town its distinctive character, is purer and 
higher than in any other city of its size with which I 
am acquainted, and purer than in many much smaller. 
The tone is not so fast, public opinion is more restric- 
tive, and women take, and are disposed to take, less 
latitude in conduct. This was not my impression from 
the newspapers. But it is true not only that social 
life holds itself to great propriety, but that the moral 
atmosphere is uncommonly pure and wholesome. At 
the same time, the city does not lack gayety of move- 
ment, and it would not be called j^rudish, nor in some 
respects conventional. 

It is curious, also, that the newspapers, or some of 
them, take pleasure in mocking at the culture of the 
town. Outside papers catch this spirit, and the " cult- 
ure " of Chicago is the butt of the j^aragraphers. It 
is a singular attitude for neAVspapers to take regard- 
ing their own city. Not long ago Mr. McClurg pub- 
lished a very neat volume, in vellum, of the fragments 
of Sappho, with translations. If the volume had ap- 
peared in Boston it would have been welcomed and 
most respectfully received in Chicago. But instead 
of regarding it as an evidence of the growing literary 
taste of the new town, the humorists saw occasion in 
it for exquisite mockery in the juxtaposition of Sapj)ho 



Chicago. ' 205 

with the modern ability to kill seven pigs a minute, 
and in the cleverest and most humorous manner set 
all the country in a roar over the incongruity. It 
goes without saying that the business men of Chicago 
were not sitting up nights to study the Greek poets 
in the original ; but the fact was that there was 
enough literary taste in the city to make the volume 
a profitable venture, and that its appearance was an 
evidence of intellectual activity and scholarly inclina- 
tion that would be creditable to any city in the land. 
It was not at all my intention to intrude my impres- 
sions of a newspaper press so very able and with such 
magnificent opportunities as that of Chicago, but it 
was unavoidable to mention one of the causes of the 
misapprehension of the social and moral condition of 
the city. 

The business statistics of Chicago, and the story of 
its growth, and the social movement, which have 
been touched on in a previous paper, give only a half- 
picture of the life of the town. The prophecy for its 
great and more hopeful future is in other exhibitions 
of its incessant activity. My limits permit only a 
reference to its churches, extensive charities (which 
alone would make a remarkable and most creditable 
chapter), hospitals, medical schools, and conservato- 
ries of music. Club life is attaining metropolitan pro- 
portions. There is on the south side the Chicago, the 
Union League, the University, the Calumet, and on 
the north side the Union — all vigorous, and most of 
them housed in superb buildings of their own. The 
Women's Exchange is a most useful organization, 
and the Ladies' Fortnightly ranks with the best intel- 
lectual associations in the country. The Commercial 



206 South and West 

Club, composed of sixty representative business men 
in all departments, is a most vital element in the pros- 
perity of the city. I cannot dwell upon these. But 
at least a word must be said about the charities, and 
some space must be given to the schools. 

The number of solicitors for far West churches and 
colleges who pass by Chicago and come to New York 
and New England for money have created the im- 
pression that Chicago is not a good place to go for 
this purpose. Whatever may be the truth of this, 
the city does give royally for private charities, and 
liberally for mission work beyond her borders. It is 
estimated by those familiar with the subject that Chi- 
cago contributes for charitable and religious purposes, 
exclusive of the public charities of the city and coun- 
ty, not less than five millions of dollars annually. I 
have not room to give even the partial list of the 
benevolent societies that lies before me, but beginning 
with the Chicago Relief and Aid, and the Armour 
Mission, and going down to lesser organizations, the 
sum annually given by them is considerably over half 
a million dollars. The amount raised by the churches 
of various denominations for religious purposes is not 
less than four millions yearly. These figures prove 
the liberality, and I am able to add that the charities 
are most sympathetically and intelligently adminis- 
tered. 

Inviting, by its opportunities for labor and its fa- 
cilities for business, comers from all the world, a 
large proportion of whom are aliens to the language 
and institutions of America, Chicago is making a 
noble fight to assimilate this material into good 
citizenship. The popular schools are liberally sus- 



Chicago. ' 207 

tained, intelligently directed, practise the most ad- 
vanced and inspiring methods, and exhibit excellent 
results. I have not the statistics of 1887 ; but in 
1886, when the population was only 703,000, there 
were 129,000 between the ages of six and sixteen, of 
whom 83,000 were enrolled as pupils, and the average 
daily attendance in schools was over 65,000. Besides 
these there were about 43,000 in private schools. The 
census of 1886 reports only 34 children between the 
ages of six and twenty-one who could neither read 
nor write. There were 91 school buildings owned by 
the city, and two rented. Of these, three are high- 
schools, one in each division, the newest, on the west 
side, having 1000 students. The school attendance 
increases by a large per cent, each year. The princi- 
pals of the high-schools were men ; of the grammar 
and primary schools, 35 men and 42 women. The 
total of teachers was 1440, of whom 56 were men. 
By the census of 1886 there were 106,929 children in 
the city under six years of age. No kindergartens 
are attached to the public schools, but the question 
of attaching them is agitated. In the lower grades, 
however, the instruction is by object lessons, draw- 
ing, writing, modelling, and exercises that train the 
eye to observe, the tongue to describe, and that awak- 
en attention without weariness. The alertness of the 
scholars and the enthusiasm of the teachers were 
marked. It should be added that German is exten- 
sively taught in the grammar schools, and that the 
number enrolled in the German classes in 1886 was 
over 28,000. There is some public sentiment for 
throwing out German from the public schools, and 
generally for restricting studies in the higher branches. 



208 South and West. 

The argument against this is that very few of the 
children, and the majority of those girls, enter the 
high-schools ; the boys are taken out early for busi- 
ness, and get no education afterwards. In 1885 were 
organized public elementary evening schools (which 
had, in 1886, 6709 pupils), and an evening high-school, 
in which book-keeping, stenography, mechanical draw- 
ing, and advanced mathematics were taught. The 
School Committee also have in charge day schools for 
the education of deaf and dumb children. 

The total expenditure for 1886 was $2,060,803; 
this includes 11,023,394 paid to superintendents and 
teachers, and large sums for new buildings, apparatus, 
and repairs. The total cash receipts for school pur- 
poses were $2,091,951. Of this was from the school 
tax fund $1,758,053 (the total city tax for all purposes 
w^as $5,368,409), and the rest from State dividend and 
school fund bonds and miscellaneous sources. These 
figures show that education is not neglected. 

Of the quality and efficacy of this education there 
cannot be two opinions, as seen in the schools which I 
visited. The high-school on the west side is a model 
of its kind ; but perhaps as interesting an example of 
popular education as any is the Franklin grammar 
and primary school on the north side, in a district of 
laboring people. Here were 1700 pupils, all children 
of w^orking people, mostly Swedes and Germans, from 
the age of six years upwards. Here were found some 
of the children of the late anarchists, and nowhere 
else can one see a more interesting attempt to manu- 
facture intelligent American citizens. The instruction 
rises through the several grades from object lessons, 
drawing, writing and reading (and writing and read- 



Chicago, • 209 

ing well), to elementary physiology, political and con- 
stitutional history, and physical geography. Here is 
taught to young children what they cannot learn at 
home, and might never clearly comprehend otherwise; 
not only something of the geography and history of 
the country, but the distinctive principles of our gov- 
ernment, its constitutional ideas, the growth, creeds, 
and relations of political parties, and the personality 
of the great men who have represented them. That 
the pupils comprehend these subjects fairly well I 
had evidence in recitations that were as pleasing as 
surprising. In this way Chicago is teaching its alien 
population American ideas, and it is fair to presume 
that the rising generation will have some notion of 
the nature and value of our institutions that will save 
them from the inclination to destroy them. 

The public mind is agitated a good deal on the 
question of the introduction of manual training into 
the public schools. The idea of some people is that 
manual training should only be used as an aid to 
mental training, in order to give definiteness and ac- 
curacy to thought ; others would like actual trades 
taught ; and others think that it is outside the func- 
tion of the State to teach anything but elementary 
mental studies. The subject would require an essay 
by itself, and I only allude to it to say that Chicago 
is quite alive to the problems and the most advanced 
educational ideas. If one would like to study the 
philosophy and the practical working of what may be 
called physico-mental training, I know no better place 
in the country to do so than the Cook County Normal 
School, near Englewood, under the charge of Colonel 
F. W. Parker, the originator of what is known as the 
14 



210 South and West. 

Quincy (Massachusetts) System. This is a training 
school for about 100 teachers, in a buikling where 
they have practice on about 500 children in all stages 
of education, from the kindergarten up to the eighth 
grade. This may be called a thorough manual train- 
ing school, but not to teach trades, work being done 
in drawing, modelling in clay, making raised maps, 
and wood - carving. The Quincy System, which is 
sometimes described as the development of character 
by developing mind and body, has a literature to it- 
self. This remarkable school, which draws teachers 
for training from all over the country, is a notable 
instance of the hospitality of the West to new and 
advanced ideas. It does not neglect the literary side 
in education. Here and in some of the grammar 
schools of Chicago the experiment is successfully 
tried of interesting young children in the best litera- 
ture by reading to them from the works of the best 
authors, ancient and modern, and giving them a taste 
for what is excellent, instead of the trash that is 
likely to fall into their hands — the cultivation of sus- 
tained and consecutive interest in narratives, essays, 
and descriptions in good literature, in place of the 
scrappy selections and reading-books written down to 
the childish level. The written comments and criti- 
cisms of the children on what they acquire in this 
way are a perfect vindication of the experiment. It 
is to be said also that this sort of education, coupled 
with the manual training, and the inculcated love for 
order and neatness, is beginning to tell on the homes 
of these children. The parents are actually being 
educated and civilized through the public schools. 
An opportunity for superior technical education is 



Chicago. 211 

given in the Chicago Manual Training School, founded 
and sustained by the Commercial Club. It has a 
handaome and commodious building on the corner of 
Michigan Avenue and Twelfth Street, which accom- 
modates over two hundred pupils, under the direction 
of Dr. Henry II. Belfield, assisted by an able corps of 
teachers and practical mechanics. It has only been 
in operation since 1884, but has fully demonstrated its 
usefulness in the training of young men for places of 
responsibility and profit. Some of the pupils are 
from the city schools, but it is open to all boys of 
good character and promise. The course is three years, 
in which the tuition is $80, $100, and $120 a year ; 
but the club provides for the payment of the tuition 
of a limited number of deserving boys whose parents 
lack the means to give them this sort of education. 
The course includes the higher mathematics, English, 
and French or Latin, physics, chemistry — in short, a 
high-school course — with drawing, and all sorts of 
technical training in work in wood and iron, the use 
and making of tools, and the building of machinery, 
up to the construction of steam-engines, stationary 
and locomotive. Throughout the course one hour each 
day is given to drawing, two hours to shop-work, and 
the remainder of the school day to study and recita- 
tion. The shops — the wood-work rooms, the foundery, 
the forge-room, the machine-shop — are exceedingly 
well equipped and well managed. The visitor cannot 
but be pleased by the tone of the school and the in- 
telligent enthusiasm of the pupils. It is an institution 
likely to grow, and perhaps become the nucleus of a 
great technical school, which the West much needs. 
It is worthy of notice also as an illustration of the 



212 South and West 

public spirit, sagacity, and liberality of the Chicago 
business men. They probably see that if the city is 
greatly to increase its importance as a manufacturing 
centre, it must train a considerable proportion of its 
population to the highest skilled labor, and that splen- 
didly equipped and ably taught technical schools 
would do for Chicago what similar institutions in 
Zurich have done for Switzerland. Chicago is ready 
for a really comprehensive technical and industrial 
college, and probably no other investment would now 
add more to the solid prosperity and wealth of the 
town. 

Such an institution would not hinder, but rather 
help, the higher education, without which the best 
technical education tends to materialize life. Chicago 
must before long recognize the value of the intellect- 
ual side by beginning the foundation of a college of 
pure learning. For in nothing is the Western society 
of to-day more in danger than in the superficial half- 
education which is called " practical," and in the lack 
of logic and philosophy. The tendency to the literary 
side — awakening a love for good books — in the public 
schools is very hopeful. The existence of some well- 
chosen private libraries shows the same tendency. In 
art and archaeology there is also much promise. The 
Art Institute is a very fine building, with a vigorous 
school in drawing and painting, and its occasional 
loan exhibitions show that the city contains a good 
many fine pictures, though scarcely proportioned to 
its wealth. The Historical Society, which has had the 
irreparable misfortune twice to lose its entire collec- 
tions by fire, is beginning anew with vigor, and will 
shortly erect a building from its own funds. Among 



Chicago, 213 

the private collections which have a historical value 
is that relating to the Indian history of the West 
made by Mr. Edward Ayer, and a large library of 
rare and scarce books, mostly of the English Shake- 
speare period, b}^ the Rev. Frank M. Bristoll. These, 
together with the remarkable collection of Mr. C. F. 
Gunther (of which further mention will be made), 
are prophecies of a great literary and archaeological 
museum. 

The city has reason to be proud of its Free Public 
Library, organized under the general library law of 
Illinois, which permits the support of a free library in 
every incorporated city, town, and township by taxa- 
tion. This library is sustained by a tax of one half- 
mill on the assessed value of all the city property. 
This brings it in now about $80,000 a year, which 
makes its income for 1888, together with its fund and 
fines, about $90,000. It is at present housed in the 
City Hall, but will soon have a building of its own 
(on Dearborn Park), towards the erection of which it 
has a considerable fund. It has about 130,000 vol- 
umes, including a fair reference library and many ex- 
pensive art books. The institution has been well man- 
aged hitherto, notwithstanding its connection with 
politics in the appointment of the trustees by the 
mayor, and its dependence upon the city councils. 
The reading-rooms are thronged daily ; the average 
daily circulation has increased yearly ; it was 2263 in 
1887 — a gain of eleven per cent, over the preceding 
year. This is stimulated by the establishment of 
eight delivering stations in different parts of the city. 
The cosmopolitan character of the users of the library 
is indicated by the uncommon number of German, 



214 South and West. 

French, Dutch, Bohemian, Polish, and Scandinavian 
books. Of the books issued at the delivery stations 
in 1887 twelve per cent, were in the Bohemian lan- 
guage. The encouraging thing about this free library- 
is that it is not only freely used, but that it is as freely 
sustained by the voting population. 

Another institution, which promises to have still 
more influence on the city, and indeed on the whole 
North-west, is the Newberry Library, now organizing 
under an able board of trustees, who have chosen Mr. 
"W. F. Poole as librarian. The munificent fund of the 
donor is now reckoned at about 82,500,000, but the 
value of the property will be very much more than 
this in a few years. A temporary building for the 
library, which is slowly forming, will be erected at 
once, but the library, which is to occupy a square on 
the north side, will not be erected until the plans are 
fully matured. It is to be a library of reference and 
study solely, and it is in contemplation to have the 
books distributed in separate rooms for each depart- 
ment, with ample facilities for reading and study in 
each room. If the library is built and the collections 
are made in accordance with the ample means at com- 
mand, and in the spirit of its projectors, it will power- 
fully tend to make Chicago not only the money but 
the intellectual centre of the North-west, and attract 
to it hosts of students from all quarters. One can 
hardly over-estimate the influence that such a library 
as this may be will have upon the character and the 
attractiveness of the city. 

I hope that it will have ample space for, and that it 
will receive, certain literary collections, such as are 
the glory and the attraction, both to students and 



Chicago. 215 

sight-seers, of the great libraries of the world. And 
this leads me to speak of the treasures of Mr. Gunther, 
the most remarkable private collection I have ever 
seen, and already worthy to rank with some of the 
most famous on public exhibition. Mr. Gunther is a 
candy manufacturer, who has an archaeological and 
"curio" taste, and for many years has devoted an 
amount of money to the purchase of historical relics 
that if known would probably astonish the public. 
Only specimens of what he has can be displayed in 
the large apartment set apart for the purpose over 
bis shop. The collection is miscellaneous, forming a 
varied and most interesting museum. It contains 
relics — many of them unique, and most of them hav- 
ing a historical value — from many lands and all periods 
since the Middle Ages, and is strong in relics and 
documents relating to our own history, from the colo- 
nial period down to the close of our civil war. But 
the distinction of the collection is in its original let- 
ters and manuscripts of famous people, and its mis- 
sals, illuminated manuscripts, and rare books. It is 
hardly possible to mention a name famous since 
America was discovered that is not here represented 
by an autograph letter or some personal relics. We 
may pass by such mementos as the Appomattox table, 
a sampler worked by Queen Elizabeth, a prayer-book 
of Mary, Queen of Scots, personal belongings of Wash- 
ington, Lincoln, and hundreds of other historical char- 
acters, but we must give a little space to the books 
and manuscripts, in order that it may be seen that all 
the wealth of Chicago is not in grain and meat. 

It is only possible here to name a few of the orig- 
inal letters, manuscripts, and historical papers in this 



21G South and West. 

■wondorfiil collection of over seventeen thousand. Most 
of the great names in the literature of our era are rep- 
resented. There is an autograph letter of ]^[oli^re, the 
only one known outside of France, excej)t one in the 
British Museum; there are letters of Voltaire, Victor 
Hugo, ^ladanie Roland, and other French Avriters. It 
is understood that this is not a collection of mere 
autographs, but of letters or original manuscripts of 
those named. In Germany, nearly all the great poets 
and -writers— Goethe, Schiller, IHdand, Lessing, etc.; 
in England, ]Milton,rope, Shelley, Keats, AVordsworth, 
Coleridge, Gowper, Hunt, Gray, etc.; the manuscript 
of Byron's "Prometheus," the "Auld Lang Syne" of 
Burns, and his "Journal in the Highlands;" "Sweet 
Home" in the author's hand; a i>oem by Thackeray; 
manuscript stories of Scott and Dickens. Among the 
Italians, Tasso, In America, the known authors, al- 
most without exception. There are letters from near- 
ly all the prominent reformers — Calvin, ^lelanchthon, 
Zwingle, Erasmus, Savonarola ; a letter of Luther in 
regard to the Pope's bull ; letters of prominent lead- 
ers — William the Silent, John the Steadfast, Gustavus 
Adolphus, Wallenstein. There is a curious collection 
of letters of the saints — St. Francis de Sales, St. Vin- 
cent de Paul, St. Borromeo ; letters of the Popes for 
three centuries and a half, and of many of the great 
cardinals. 

I must set down a few more of the noted names, 
and that without much order. There is a manuscript 
of Charlotte Corday (probably the only one in this 
country), John Bunyan, Izaak Walton, John Cotton, 
Michael Angelo, Galileo, Lorenzo the Magniticent; let- 
ters of Queen Elizabeth, Mary, Queen of Scots, Mary 



Chicago. 217 

of England, Anno, several of Victoria (one at tlie age 
of twelve), Catherine de' Medici, Marie Antoinette, 
Josephine, Marie Louise; letters of all the Napoleons, 
of Frederick the Great, Marat, Robespierre, St. Just ; 
a letter of Hernando Cortez to Charles the Fifth; a 
letter of Alverez; letters of kings of all P^uropean na- 
tions, and statesmen and generals without number. 

The collection is rich in colonial and Revolutionary 
material; original letters from Plymouth Colon}', 1G21, 
1622, 1023 — I believe the only ones known; manuscript 
sermons of the early American ministers; letters of the 
first bishops, White and Seabury; letters of John An- 
dre, Natlian Hale, Kosciusko, Pulaski, Do Kalb, Steu- 
ben, and of great numbers of the general and subor- 
dinate officers of the French and Revolutionary wars; 
William Tudor's manuscript account of the battle of 
Bunker Ilill; a letter of Aide-de-camp Robert Orhm 
to the Governor of Pennsylvania relating Braddock's 
defeat; the original of Washington's first Thanksgiv- 
ing proclamation; the report of the committee of the 
Continental Congress on its visit to Valley Forge on 
the distress of -the army; the original proceedings of 
the Commissioners of the Colonies at Cambridge for 
the organization of the Continental army; original re- 
turns of the Hessians captured at Princeton; orderly 
books of the Continental army; manuscripts and sur- 
veys of the early explorers; letters of Lafitte, the pi- 
rate, Paul Jones, Captain Lawrence, Bainbridge, and 
so on. Documents relating to the Washington fami- 
ly are very remarkable: the original will of Lawrence 
Washington bequeathing Mount Vernon to George ; 
will of John Custis to his family; letters of Martha, 
of Mary, the mother of George, of Betty Lewis, his 



218 South and West. 

sister, of all Lis step and grand children of the Cus- 
tis family. 

In music there are the original manuscript compo- 
sitions of all the leading musicians in our modern 
world, and there is a large collection of the choral 
books from ancient monasteries and churches. There 
are exquisite illuminated missals on parchment of all 
periods from the eighth century. Of the large array 
of Bibles and other early printed books it is impossi- 
ble to speak, except in a general way. There is a 
copy of the first English Bible, Coverdale's, also of 
the very rare second Matthews, and of most of the 
other editions of the English Bible; the first Scotch, 
Irish, French, AYelsh, and German Luther Bibles; the 
first Eliot's Indian Bible, of 1662, and the second, of 
1685 ; the first American Bibles ; the first American 
primers, almanacs, newspapers, and the first patent, 
issued in 1794; the first book printed in Boston; the 
first printed accounts of New York, Pennsylvania, 
New Jersey, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia; the 
first picture of New York City, an original plan of 
the city in IVOO, and one of it in 1765; early surveys 
of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York ; the earliest 
maps of America, including the first, second, and third 
map of the world in which America ajDpears. 

Returning to England, there are the Shakespeare fo- 
lio editions of 1632 and 1685; the first of his printed 
"Poems" and the "Rape of Lucrece;" an early quarto 
of "Othello;" the first edition of Ben Jonson, 1616, in 
which Shakespeare's name appears in the cast for a 
play ; and letters from the Earl of Southampton, 
Shakespeare's friend, and Sir Walter Raleigh, Francis 
Bacon, and Essex. There is also a letter written by 



Chicago, ' 219 

Oliver Cromwell while he was engaged in the con- 
quest of Ireland. 

The relics, documents, and letters illustrating our 
civil war are constantly being added to. There are 
many old engravings, caricatures, and broadsides. Of 
oil-portraits there are three originals of Washington, 
one by Stuart, one by Peale, one by Polk, and I think 
I remember one or two miniatures. There is also al 
portrait in oil of Shakespeare which may become im- 
portant. The original canvas has been remounted, and* 
there are indubitable signs of its age, although the 
picture can be traced back only about one hundred 
and fifty years. The owner hopes to be able to prove 
that it is a contemporary work. The interesting fact 
about it is that while it is not remarkable as a work 
of art, it is recognizable at once as a likeness of what 
we suppose from other portraits and the busts to be 
the face and head of Shakespeare, and yet it is differ- 
ent from all other pictures we know, so that it does 
not suggest itself as a copy. 

The most important of Mr. Gunther's collection is 
an autograph of Shakespeare; if it prove to be genu- 
ine, it will be one of the four in the world, and a great 
possession for America. This autograph is pasted on 
the fly-leaf of a folio of 1632, which was the property 
of one John Ward. In 1839 there was published in 
London, from manuscripts in possession of the Med- 
ical Society, extracts from the diary of John Ward 
(1G48-1679), who was vicar and doctor at Stratford- 
on-Avon. It is to this diary that we owe certain facts 
theretofore unknown about Shakespeare. The editor, 
Mr. Stevens, had this volume in his hands while he 
was compiling his book, and refers to it in his pref- 



220 South and West. 

ace. He supposed it to have belonged to the John 
Ward, vicar, who kept the diary. It turns out, how- 
ever, to have been the property of John AVard tlie 
actor, who was in Stratford in 1V40, was an enthusi- 
ast in the revival of Shakespeare, and played Hamlet 
there in order to raise money to repair the bust of 
the poet in the church. This folio has the appear- 
ance of being much used. On the fly-leaf is writing 
byAVard and his signature; tliere are marginal notes 
and directions in his hand, and several of the pages 
from w^hich parts were torn off have been repaired 
by manuscript text neatly joined. 

The Shakespeare signature is pasted on the leaf 
above Ward's name. The paper on which it is writ- 
ten is unlike that of the book in texture. The slip 
was pasted on when the leaf was not as brown as it 
is now, as can be seen at one end where it is lifted. 
The signature is written out fairly and in full. Will- 
iam Shal'spearej like the one to the will, and differs 
from the two others, which are hasty scrawls, as if 
the writer were cramped for room, or iinislied off the 
last sylhible with a flourish, indifferent to the forma- 
tion of the letters. I liad the opportunity to compare 
it with a careful tracing of the signature to the will 
sent over by Mr. Hallowell-Phillips. xVt flrst sight 
the two signatures appear to be identical; but on ex- 
amination they are not; there is just that difference 
in the strokes, spaces, and formation of the letters 
that always appears in two signatures by the same 
hand. One is not a copy of the other, and the one 
in the folio had to me the unmistakable stamp of gen- 
uineness. Tlie experts in handwriting and the micro- 
scopists in this country who have examined ink and 



Chicago, 221 

paper as to antiquity, I understand, regard it as gen- 
uine. 

There seems to be all along the line no reason to 
suspect forgery. What more natural than that John 
Ward, the owner of the book, and a Shakespeare en- 
thusiast, should have enriched his beloved volume 
with an autograph which he found somewhere in 
Stratford? And in 1V40 there was no craze or con- 
troversy about Shakespeare to make the forgery of 
his autograph an object. And there is no suspicion 
that the book has been doctored for a market. It 
never was sold for a price. It was found in Utah, 
whither it had drifted from England in the posses- 
sion of an emigrant, and he readily gave it in ex- 
change for a new and fresh edition of Shakespeare's 
works. 

I have dwelt upon this collection at some length, 
first because of its intrinsic value, second because of 
its importance to Chicago as a nucleus for what (I 
hope in connection with the Newberry Library) will 
become one of the most interesting museums in the 
country, and lastly as an illustration of what a West- 
ern business man may do with his money. 

New York is the first and Chicago the second base 
of operations on this continent — the second in point 
of departure, I will not say for another civilization, 
but for a great civilizing and conquering movement, 
at once a reservoir and distributing point of energy, 
power, and money. And precisely here is to be fought 
out and settled some of the most important problems 
concerning labor, supply, and transportation. Striking 
as are the operations of merchants, manufacturers, and 
traders, nothing in the city makes a greater appeal to 



222 Sout/i and Wtst. 

the imagination than the railways that centre there, 
whether we consider their lifty thousand miles of track, 
the enormous investment in them, or their competition 
for the carrying trade of the vast regions they })ierce, 
and apparently compel to be tributary to the central 
city. The story of their building would read like a 
romance, and a. simple statement of their organization, 
management, and business rivals the affairs of an em- 
pire. Tlie present development of a belt road round 
the city, to serve as a track of freight exchange for 
all the lines, like the transfer grounds between 8t. 
Paul and IMinneapolis, is found to be an affair of 
great magnitude, as must needs bo to accommodate 
lines of tratlic that represent an investment in stock 
and bonds of 81,305,000,000. 

As it is not my purpose to describe the railway 
systems of the AVest, but only to sj^eak of some of 
the problems involved in them, it will suffice to men- 
tion two of the leading corporations. Passing by the 
great eastern lines, aiul those like the Illinois Central, 
and the Chicago, Alton, and St. Louis, and the Atchi- 
son, Topeka, and Santa Fe, which are operating main- 
ly to the south and south-west, and the Chicago, Mil- 
waukee, and St. Paul, one of the greatest corporations, 
with a mileage which had reached 4921 December 1, 
1S85, and has increased since, we may name the Chi- 
cago and North-western, and the Chicago, Burlington, 
aiul Quincy. Each of these great systems, Avliich has 
grown by accretion and extension and consolidations 
of small roads, operates over four thousand miles of 
road, leaving out from the North-western's mileage 
that of the Omaha system, which it controls. Looked 
at on the map, each of these systems completely occu- 



Chicago. 223 

pies a vast territory, the one mainly to tlie north of 
the other, but they interlace to some extent and par- 
allel each other in very important competitions. 

The North-western system, which includes, besides 
the lines that have its name, the St. Paul, Minneapolis, 
and Omaha, the Fremont, Elkhorn, and Missouri Val- 
ley, and several minor roads, occupies northern Illi- 
nois and southern Wisconsin, sends a line along Lake 
Michigan to Lake Superior, with branches, a line to 
St. Paul, with branches tapping Lake Superior again 
at Bayfield and Duluth, sends another trunk line, with 
branches, into the far fields of Dakota, drops down a 
tangle of lines through Iowa and into Nebraska, sends 
another great line through northern Nebraska into 
Wyoming, with a divergence into the Black Hills, and 
runs all these feeders into Chicago by another trunk 
line from Omaha. By the report of 1887 the gross 
earnings of this system (in round numbers) were over 
twenty-six millions, expenses over twenty millions, leav- 
ing a net income of over six million dollars. In these 
items the receipts for freight were over nineteen mill- 
ions, and from passengers less than six millions. Not 
to enter into confusing details, the magnitude of the 
system is shown in the general balance-sheet for May, 
1887, when the cost of road (4101 miles), the sinking 
funds, the general assets, and the operating assets foot 
up Si 76,048,000. Over 3500 miles of this road are laid 
with steel rails; the equipment required 735 engines 
and over 23,000 cars of all sorts. It is worthy of note 
that a table makes the net earnings of 4000 miles of 
road, 1887, only a little more than those of 3000 miles 
of road in 1882 — a greater gain evidently to the pub- 
lic than to the railroad. 



224 South and West 

In speaking of tliis system territorially, I have in- 
cluded the Chicago, St. Paul, Miinieapolis, and Omaha, 
but not in the above figures. 1'he two systems have 
the same president, but different general managers and 
other officials, and the reports are separate. To the 
over 4000 miles of the other North-western lines, there- 
fore, are to be added the 13G0 miles of the Omaha 
system (report of December, 188G, since considerably 
increased). The balance-sheet of the Omaha system 
(December, 188G) shows a cost of over fifty-seven mill- 
ions. Its total net earnings over operating expenses 
and taxes were about $2,304,000. It then required an 
equipment of 194 locomotives and about COOO cars. 
These figures are not, of course, given for specific rail- 
road information, but merely to give a general idea of 
the magnitude of operations. This may be illustrated 
by another item. During the year for which the above 
figures have been given the entire North-western sys- 
tem ran on the average 415 passenger and 732 freight 
trains each day through the year. It may also be an 
interesting comparison to say that all the railways in 
Connecticut, including those that run into other States, 
have 410 locomotives, 6G8 passenger cars, and 11,502 
other cars, and that their total mileage in the State is 
1405 miles. 

The Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy (report of De- 
cember, 1886) was operating 403G miles of road. Its 
only eccentric development was the recent Burlington 
and Northern, up the Mississippi River to St. Paul. 
Its main stem from Chicago branches out over north- 
ern and western Illinois, runs down to St. Louis, from 
thence to Kansas City by way of Hannibal, has a 
trunk line to Omaha, criss-crosses northern Missouri 



Chicago, 225 

and southern Iowa, skirts and pierces Kansas, and 
fairly occupies three-quarters of Nebraska with a net- 
work of tracks, sending out lines north of the Platte, 
and one to Cheyenne and one to Denver. The whole 
amount of stock and bonds, December, 1886, was re- 
ported at 8155,920,000. The gross earnings for 1886 
were over twenty-six millions (over nineteen of which 
was for freight and over five for passengers), operat- 
ing expenses over fourteen millions, leaving over twelve 
millions net earnings. The system that year paid eight 
per cent, dividends (as it had done for a long series of 
years), leaving over fixed charges and dividends about 
a million and a half to be carried to surplus or con- 
struction outlays. The equipment for the year re- 
quired 619 engines and over 24,000 cars. These fig- 
ures do not give the exact present condition of the 
road, but only indicate the magnitude of its affairs. 

Both these great systems have been well managed, 
and both have been, and continue to be, great agents 
in developing the West. Both have been profitable to 
investors. The comparatively small cost of building 
roads in the West and the profit hitherto have in- 
vited capital, and stimulated the construction of roads 
not absolutely needed. There are too many miles of 
road for capitalists. Are there too many for the ac- 
commodation of the public ? What locality would be 
willing to surrender its road ? 

It is difficult to understand the attitude of the 
Western Granger and the Western Legislatures tow- 
ards the railways, or it would be if we didn't under- 
stand pretty well the nature of demagogues the world 
over. The people are everywhere crazy for roads, for 
more and more roads. The whole West we are con- 
15 



226 South and West. 

sidering is made by railways. Without them the larger 
part of it would be uninhabitable, the lands of small 
value, produce useless for want of a market. No rail- 
ways, no civilization. Year by year settlements have 
increased in all regions touched by railways, land has 
risen in price, and freight charges have diminished. 
And yet no sooner do the people get the railways 
near them than they become hostile to the compa- 
nies ; hostility to railway corporations seems to be 
the dominant sentiment in the Western mind, and 
the one most naturally invoked by any political dem- 
agogue who wants to climb up higher in elective of- 
fice. The roads are denounced as "monopolies" — a 
word getting to be applied to any private persons 
who are successful in business — and their consolida- 
tion is regarded as a standing menace to society. 

Of course it goes without saying that great corpo- 
rations with exceptional privileges are apt to be arro- 
gant, unjust, and grasping, and especially when, as in 
the case of railways, they unite private interests and 
public functions, they need the restraint of law and 
careful limitations of powers. But the Western situ- 
ation is nevertheless a very curious one. Naturally 
when capital takes great risks it is entitled to propor- 
tionate profits; but profits always encourage competi- 
tion, and the great AYestern lines are already in a war 
for existence that does not need much unfriendly leg- 
islation to make fatal. In fact, the lowering of rates 
in railway wars has gone on so rapidly of late years 
that the most active Granger Legislature cannot frame 
hostile bills fast enough to keep pace with it. Con- 
solidation is objected to. Yet this consideration must 
not be lost sight of: the West is cut up by local roads 



Chicago. 227 

that could not be maintained; they would not pay run- 
ning expenses if they had not been made parts of a 
great system. Whatever may be the danger of the 
^consolidation system, the country has doubtless bene- 
fited by it. 

The present tendency of legislation, pushed to its 
logical conclusion, is towards a practical confiscation 
of railway property; that is, its tendency is to so inter- 
fere with management, so restrict freedom of arrange- 
ment, so reduce rates, that the companies will with 
difficulty continue operations. The first effect of this 
will be, necessarily, poorer service and deteriorated 
equipments and tracks. Roads that do not prosper 
cannot keep up safe lines. Experienced travellers 
usually shun those that are in the hands of a re- 
ceiver. The Western roads of which I speak have 
been noted for their excellent service and the liber- 
ality towards the public in accommodations, especial- 
ly in fine cars and matters pertaining to the comfort 
of passengers. Some dining cars on the Omaha sys- 
tem were maintained last year at a cost to the com- 
pany of ten thousand dollars over receipts. The West- 
ern Legislatures assume that because a railway which 
is thickly strung with cities can carry passengers for 
two cents a mile, a railway running over an almost 
unsettled plain can carry for the same price. They 
assume also that because railway companies in a fool- 
ish fight for business cut rates, the lowest rate they 
touch is a living one for them. The same logic that 
induces Legislatures to fix rates of transportation, di- 
rectly or by means of a commission, would lead it to 
set a price on meat, wheat, and groceries. Legislative 
restriction is ojiq thing; legislative destruction is an- 



228 South and West. 

other. There is a craze of prohibition and interfer- 
ence. Iowa has an attack of it. In Nebraska, not 
only the Legislature but the courts have been so hos- 
tile to railway enterprise that one hundred and fifty 
miles of new road graded last year, which was to re- 
ceive its rails this spring, will not be railed, because it 
is not safe for the company to make further invest- 
ments in that State. Between the Grangers on the 
one side and the labor unions on the other, the rail- 
ways are in a tight place. Whatever restrictions 
great corporations may need, the sort of attack now 
made on them in the West is altogether irrational. 
Is it always made from public motives? The legis- 
lators of one Western State had been accustomed to 
receive from the various lines that centred at the 
capital trip passes, in addition to their personal an- 
nual i^asses. Trip passes are passes that the mem- 
bers can send to their relations, friends, and political 
allies who w^ant to visit the capital. One year the 
several roads agreed that they would not issue trip 
passes. When the members asked the agent for them 
they w^ere told that they were not ready. As days 
passed and no trip passes were ready, hostile and an- 
noying bills began to be introduced into the Legislat- 
ure. In six weeks there was a shower of them. The 
roads yielded, and began to give out the passes. Af- 
ter that, nothing more was heard of the bills. 

What the public have a right to complain of is 
the manipulation of railways in Wall Street gam- 
bling. But this does not account for the hostility 
to the corporations which are developing the West 
by an extraordinary outlay of money, and cutting 
their own throats by a war of rates. The vast in- 



Chicago. 220 

terests at stake, and the ignorance of the relation of 
legislation to the laws of business, make the railway 
problem to a spectator in Chicago one of absorbing 
interest. 

In a thorough discussion of all interests it must 
be admitted that the railways have brought many of 
their troubles upon themselves by their greedy wars 
with each other, and perhaps in some cases by teach- 
ing Legislatures that have bettered their instructions, 
and that tyrannies in management and unjust dis- 
criminations (such as the Inter- State Commerce Law 
was meant to stop) have much to do in provoking 
hostility that survives many of its causes. 

I cannot leave Chicago without a word concerning 
the town of Pullman, although it has already been 
fully studied in the pages of Harper's Monthly. 
It is one of the most interesting experiments in the 
world. As it is only a little over seven years old, 
it would be idle to prophesy about it, and I can only 
say that thus far many of the predictions as to the 
effect of " paternalism " have not come true. If it 
shall turn out that its only valuable result is an " ob- 
ject lesson " in decent and orderly living, the experi- 
ment will not have been in vain. It is to be remem- 
bered that it is not a philanthropic scheme, but a 
purely business operation, conducted on the idea that 
comfort, cleanliness, and agreeable surroundings con- 
duce more to the prosperity of labor and of capital 
than the opposites. 

Pullman is the only city in existence built from the 
foundation on scientific and sanitary principles, and 
not more or less the result of accident and variety of 
purpose and incapacity. Before anything else was 



230 South and West. 

done on the flat prairie, perfect drainage, sewerage, 
and water supply were provided. The shops, the 
houses, the public buildings, the parks, the streets, 
the recreation grounds, then followed in intelligent 
creation. Its public buildings are fine, and the group- 
ing of them about the open flower-planted spaces is 
very effective. It is a handsome city, with the single 
drawback of monotony in the well-built houses. Pull- 
man is within the limits of the village of Hyde Park, 
but it is not included in the annexation of the latter to 
Chicasro. 

o 

It is certainly a pleasing industrial city. The work- 
shops are spacious, light, and well ventilated, perfectly 
systematized; for instance, timber goes into one end 
of the long car-shop and, without turning back, comes 
out a freight car at the other, the capacity of the shop 
being one freight car every fifteen minutes of the 
working hours. There are a variety of industries, 
which employ about 4500 workmen. Of these about 
500 live outside the city, and there are about 1000 
workmen who live in the city and work elsewhere. 
The company keeps in order the streets, parks, lawns, 
and shade trees, but nothing else except the schools is 
free. The schools are excellent, and there are over 
1300 children enrolled in them. The company has a 
well-selected library of over 6000 volumes, containing 
many scientific and art books, which is open to all 
residents on payment of an annual subscription of 
three dollars. Its use increases yearly, and study 
classes are formed in connection with it. The com- 
pany rents shops to dealers, but it carries on none of 
its own. Wages are paid to employes without de- 
duction, except as to rent, and the women appreciate 



Chicago, • 231 

a provision that secures them a home beyond perad- 
venture. The competition among dealers brings prices 
to the Chicago rates, or lower, and then the great city 
is easily accessible for shopping. House rent is a lit- 
tle higher for ordinary workmen than in Chicago, but 
not higher in proportion to accommodations, and liv- 
ing is reckoned a little cheaper. The reports show 
that the earnings of operatives exceed those of other 
working communities, averaging per capita (exclusive 
of the higher pay of the general management) |590 
a year. I noticed that piece-wages were generally 
paid, and always when possible. The town is a hive 
of busy workers; employment is furnished to all class- 
es except the school-children, and the fine moral and 
physical appearance of the young women in the up- 
holstery and other work rooms would please a philan- 
thropist. 

Both the health and the 'morale of the town are 
exceptional; and the moral tone of the workmen has 
constantly improved under the agreeable surround- 
ings. Those who prefer the kind of independence 
that gives them filthy homes and demoralizing asso- 
ciations seem to like to live elsewhere. Pullman has 
a population of 10,000. I do not know another city 
of 10,000 that has not a place where liquor is sold, 
nor a house nor a professional woman of ill repute. 
With the restrictions as to decent living, the com- 
munity is free in its political action, its church and 
other societies, and in all healthful social activity. 
It has several ministers; it seems to require the serv- 
ices of only one or two policemen; it supports four 
doctors and one lawyer. 

I know that any control, any interference with in- 



232 South and West 

dividual responsibility, is un-American. Our theory 
is that every person knows what is best for himself. 
It is not true, but it may be safer, in working out all 
the social problems, than any lessening of responsi- 
bility either in the home or in civil affairs. When I 
contrast the dirty tenements, with contiguous seduc- 
tions to vice and idleness, in some parts of Chicago, 
with the homes of Pullman, I am glad that this ex- 
periment has been made. It may be worth some sac- 
rifice to teach people that it is better for them, morally 
and pecuniarily, to live cleanly and under educational 
influences that increase their self-respect. No doubt 
it is best that people should own their homes, and that 
they should assume all the responsibilities of citizen- 
ship. But let us wait the full evolution of the Pull- 
man idea. The town could not have been built as an 
object lesson in any other way than it was built. The 
hope is that laboring people will voluntarily do here- 
after what they have here been induced to accept. 
The model city stands there as a lesson, the wonderful 
creation of less than eight years. The company is 
now preparing to sell lots on the west side of the rail- 
way-tracks, and we shall see what influence this nu- 
cleus of order, cleanliness, and system will have upon 
the larger community rapidly gathering about it. Of 
course people should be free to go up or go down. 
Will they be injured by the opportunity of seeing 
how much pleasanter it is to go up than to go down ? 



XI. 

THREE CAPITALS— SPRINGFIELD, INDIAN- 
APOLIS, COLUMBUS. 

To one travelling over this vast country, especially 
the northern and western portions, the superficial im- 
pression made is that of uniformity, and even monot- 
ony: towns are alike, cities have a general resem- 
blance. State lines are not recognized, and the idea of 
conformity and centralization is easily entertained. 
Similar institutions, facility of communication, a dis- 
position to stronger nationality, we say, are rapidly 
fusing us into one federal mass. 

But when we study a State at its centre, its politi- 
cal action, its organization, its spirit, the management 
of its institutions of learning and of charity, the ten- 
dencies, restrictive or liberal, of its legislation, even 
the tone of social life and the code of manners, we 
discover distinctions, individualities, almost as many 
differences as resemblances. And we see — the saving 
truth in our national life — that each State is a well- 
nigh indestructible entity, an empire in itself, proud 
and conscious of its peculiarities, and jealous of its 
rights. We see that State boundaries are not imagi- 
nary lines, made by the geographers, which could be 
easily altered by the central power. Nothing, indeed, 
in our Avhole national development, considering the 
common influences that have made us, is so remark- 
able as the difference of the several States. Even on 



2U jSouth and West 

the linos of a oominoii scttk'iiiont, say from Now Eno^- 
hind and Now \"urk, noto tho dill'oronoos botwoon 
nortliorn Ohio, northern Indiana, northern Illinois, 
Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Or take another line, and 
see the diirerenVes between sonthorn Ohio, southern 
Indiana, southern Illinois, and northern Missouri. But 
each State, with its diverse population, has a certain 
homopfoneity and character of its own. AVe can under- 
stand this whore there are great ditrerencos of eliniato, 
or when one is mountainous and the other Hat. Hut 
why should Indiana be so totally unlike the two 
States that ilank it, in so many of the developments 
of civilized lilo or in retarded action ; and why should 
Iowa, in its entire temper and spirit, be so unlike Illi- 
nois? One State copies the institutions of another, 
but there is always something in its life that it does 
not copy from any other. And the perpetuity of the 
Union rests upon the soparateness and integrity of this 
State life. I confess that I am not so much impressed 
by the nuxgnitude of our country as I am by the won- 
derful system of our complex government in unity, 
which permits tho freest development of human nat- 
ure, and the most perfect adaptability to local condi- 
tions. I can conceive of no greater enemy to tho 
Union than ho who would by any attempt at further 
centralization weaken the self-depemlence, pride, and 
dignity of a single State. It seems to me that one 
travels in vain over the United States if he does not 
learn that lesson. 

Tho State of Illinois is geographically much favored 
both for agriculture and commerce. With access to 
the Gulf by two great rivers that bound it on two 



TJiTCG Oajyltals. "SMi 

sidcH, ;iii(l coimiMinicaliiifj^ willi tli<i Al,I:uil,I<^ I)y Liiko 
Miclii;^;iii, t'litcrpriHt! Iiuh uidc^l tlicsn (toimiKMciuI jmI- 
vaiit.'i«j^('H l)y (;()V('riii<^ il, witli mil way h. Slnilc'liiii;^- 
from ()ial('n;i, to Cairo, il. Iia.s a «^r('al, variedly of <'.li- 
iiialo ; \l is w(!ll vvalcMcd l>y many n()l)I(! Kticam.s, mikI 
contains in its ^rc^at area Hcan-cly ;iny vvaHln land. I(, 
lias its conlijisLs ol" (tivili/.alion. In l\\y\ noillicrn li.ill" 
ar(^ tlm thrivin^jj (;iti(!H ; th(i cxl.rcmii sonllnirn portion, 
ovvin^ in part to a moro <l(!l>ilitatinp;-, i<!HS vvliolcHomt) 
climate, an<l in part to a Ichh virile, airdiitions popnla- 
tion, still k(!eps its "h]^yptian" repntation. lint tlni 
railways liav(! aln^ady mad(;a <^reat elianL?(! in sontliern 
Illinois, .'Uid (!dn<%ition is transrorminj^- it. The estal)- 
lisliment of a normal sc^iiool at ('arl)ondale in IhV 1 7r* 
lias clian;4e(l the as[)(u;t of a ^rcat rif^ion. I am told 
by tlm Stato SupcrintoiKh^nt of I<]diie;ition that tlu; 
contrast in dress, maniKirs, <udtivation, of the eonntry 
crowd whi(th eani(! to witness the d<Mli(tation of the first 
liiiildinu^, and those who came to seci tin; inanjjfination 
of th(i new sejjool, tw<!lv(!i years lat(M', was som<!thin«^ 
ustoriisliin^. 

l*assini^ thi-oijf^h the (;(;ntral j)ortion of tin; State to 
8prin<^rK!ld, '.ih.i'V an interval of m;uiy years, hit us say 
a generation, I was imprcsHcd with the tr;insrorm;i,tion 
the (ioiintry had nndcw^onc; l>y triMi-plantini^' and the 
growth of eonsi<lei;il>l(i |)atelies of fon^st. The Stat(! 
is gc^nerully prosper(>us. 'I'he I'lirmers have moiK^y, 
HOimj surplus to spend in liixuri(;s, in tin; (tdue^.-ition ol' 
their (;hildi-(;n, in musical instrum(tnts, in tin; adorn- 
ment of theii- hom(;s. This is tin; univerHal re[)0)t of 
the comm(!rei;d travelh^rs, thos(j mod(!rn couri<*rs of 
liusiness and information, who run in swarms to an<l 
fro ov(;r the whoh^ land. 'I'o them it is signilieant — 



23G South and West. 

their opinion can go for wliat it is worth — that Illinois 
has not triod the restrictive and prohibitory legislation 
of its western neighbor, Iowa, which, with its rolling 
prairies and park-like timber, loved in the season of 
birds and flowers, is one of the most fertile and lovely- 
States in the West. 

Springfield, which spreads its 30,000 people exten- 
sively over a plain on the Sangamon River, is prosper- 
ous, and in the season when any ]ilace can be agree- 
able, a beautifurcity. The elm grows Avell in the rich 
soil, and its many broad, well -shaded streets, with 
pretty detached houses and lawns, make it very at- 
tractive, a delightful rural capital. The large Illinois 
towns are slowly lifting themselves out of the slough 
of rich streets, better adapted to crops than to trade ; 
though good material for pavement is nowhere abun- 
dant. Springfield has recently improved its condition 
by paving, mostly with cedar blocks, twenty -five 
miles of streets. I notice that in some of the AVestern 
towns tile pavement is being tried. Manufacturing 
is increasing — there is a prosperous rolling-mill and a 
successful watch factory — but the overwhelming in- 
terest of the city is that it is the centre of the politi- 
cal and educational institutions — of the life emanating 
from the State-house. 

The State-house is, I believe, famous. It is a big 
building, a great deal has been spent on it in the way 
of ornamentation, and it enjoys the distinction of the 
highest State-house dome in the country — 350 feet. 
It has the merit also of being well placed on an eleva- 
tion, and its rooms are spacious and very well planned. 
It is an incongruous pile externally, mixing many 
styles of architecture, placing Corinthian capitals on 



Three CaxntaU. 237 

Doric columns, and generally losing the impression of 
a dignified mass in details. Within, it is especiall}^ 
rich in wall-casings of beautiful and variegated mar- 
bles, each panel exquisite, but all together tending to 
dissipate any idea of unity of design or simplicity. 
Xothing whatever can be said for many of the scenes 
in relief, or the mural paintings (except that they il- 
lustrate the history of the State), nor for most of the 
statues in the corridors, but the decoration of the chief 
rooms, in mingling of colors and material, is frankly 
barbarous. 

Illinois has the reputation of being slow in matters 
of education and reform. A day in the State offices, 
however, will give the visitor an impression of intelli- 
gence and vigor in these directions. The office of the 
State Board of Pharmacy in the Capitol shows a strict 
enforcement of the law in the supervision of drugs 
and druggists. Prison management has also most in- 
telligent consideration. The two great penitentiaries, 
the Southem, at Chester (with about 800 convicts), 
and the Northern, at Joliet (with about 1600 convicts), 
call for no special comment. The one at Joliet is a 
model of its kind, with a large library, and such 
schooling as is practicable in the system, and is well 
administered ; and I am glad to see that Mr. Mc- 
Claughry, the warden, believes that incorrigibles should 
be permanently held, and that grading, the discipline 
of labor and education, with a parole system, can make 
law-abiding citizens of many convicts. 

In school education the State is certainly not su- 
pine in efforts. Out of a State population of about 
8,500,000, there were, in 1887, 1,627,841 under twenty- 
one years, and 1,096,464 between the ages of six and 



238 South and West 

twenty-one. The school age for free attendance is 
from six to twenty-one ; for compulsory attendance, 
from eight to fourteen. There were 749,994 children 
enrolled, and 506,197 in daily attendance. Those en- 
rolled in private schools numbered 87,725. There were 
2258 teachers in private schools, and 22,925 in public 
schools ; of this latter, 7462 were men and 15,463 
women. The average monthly salary of men was 
$51.48, and of women $42.17. The sum available for 
school purposes in 1887 was $12,896,515, in an assessed 
value of taxable property of $797,752,888. These 
figures are from Dr. N. W. Edwards, Superintendent 
of Public Instruction, whose energy is felt in every 
part of the State. 

The State prides itself on its institutions of charity. 
I saw some of them at Jacksonville, an liour's ride 
west of Springfield. Jacksonville is a very pretty 
city of some 15,000, with elm-shaded avenues that 
suggest but do not rival New Haven — one of those 
intellectual centres that are a continual surprise to 
our English friends in their bewildered exploration of 
our monotonous land. In being the Western centre 
of Platonic philosophy, it is more like Concord than 
like New Haven. It is the home of a large number of 
people who have travelled, who give intelligent atten- 
tion to art, to literary study in small societies and 
clubs — its Monday Evening Club of men long ante- 
dated most of the similar institutions at the East — 
and to social problems. I certainly did not expect to 
find, as I did, water-colors by Turner in Jacksonville, 
besides many other evidences of a culture that must 
modify many Eastern ideas of what the West is and 
is getting to be. 



Three Ca^pitals'. 239 

The Illinois College is at Jacksonville. It is one of 
twenty-five small colleges in the State, and I believe 
the only one that adheres to the old curriculum, and 
does not adopt co-education. It has about sixty stu- 
dents in the college proper, and about one hundred and 
thirty in the preparatory academy. Most of the Illi- 
nois colleges have preparatory departments, and so long 
as they do, and the various sects scatter their energies 
among so many institutions, the youth of the State 
who wish a higher education will be obliged to go East. 
The school perhaps the most vigorous just now is the 
University of Illinois, at Urbana, a school of agricult- 
ure and applied science mainly. The Central Hospital 
for the Insane (one of three in the State), under the 
superintendence of Dr. Henry F. Carriel, is a fine estab- 
lishment, a model of neatness and good management, 
with over nine hundred patients, about a third of whom 
do some light work on the farm or in the house. A 
large conservatory of plants and flowers is rightly re- 
cjarded as a remedial aojencv in the treatment of the 
patients. Here also is a fine school for the education 
of the blind. 

The Institution for the Education of Deaf-Mutes, 
Dr. Philip H. Gillette, superintendent, is, I believe, the 
largest in the world, and certainly one of the most 
thoroughly equipped and successful in its purposes. 
It has between five hundred and six hundred pupils. 
All the departments found in many other institutions 
are united here. The school has a manual training 
department; articulation is taught; the art school ex- 
hibits surprising results in aptitude for both drawing 
and painting; and industries are taught to the extent 
of giving every pupil a trade or some means of support 



240 South and West 

— shoemaking, cabinet-making, printing, sewing, gar- 
dening, and baking. 

Such an institution as this raises many interesting 
questions. It is at once evident that the loss of the 
sense of hearing has an effect on character, moral and 
intellectual. Whatever may be the education of the 
deaf-mute, he will remain, in some essential and not 
easily to be characterized respects, different from other 
people. It is exceedingly hard to cultivate in them a 
spirit of self-dependence, or eradicate the notion that 
society owes them perpetual care and support. The 
education of deaf-mutes, and the teaching them trades, 
so that they become intelligent and productive mem- 
bers of society, of course induce marriages among them. 
Is not this calculated to increase the number of deaf- 
mutes ? Dr. Gillette thinks not. The vital statistics 
show that consanguineous marriages are a large factor 
in deaf-muteism; about ten per cent., it is estimated, 
of the deaf-mutes are the offspring of parents related 
by blood. Ancestral defects are not always perpetu- 
ated in kind; they may descend in physical deformity, 
in deafness, in imbecility. Deafness is more apt to 
descend in collateral branches than in a straight line. 
It is a striking fact in a table of relationships prepared 
by Dr. Gillette that, while the 450 deaf-mutes enumer- 
ated had Y70 relationships to other deaf-mutes, making 
a total of 1220, only tw^elve of them had deaf-mute par- 
ents, and only two of them one deaf-mute parent, the 
mother of these having been able to hear, and that in 
no case was the mother alone a deaf-mute. Of the pu- 
pils who have left this institution, 251 have married 
deaf-mutes, and 19 hearing persons. These marriages 
have been as fruitful as the average, and among them 



Three Capitals. 2il 

all only sixteen have deaf-mute children; in some of 
the families having a deaf child there are other chil- 
dren who hear. These facts, says the report, clearly in- 
dicate that the probability of deaf offspring from deaf 
parentage is remote, while other facts may clearly in- 
dicate that a deaf person probably has or will have a 
deaf relation other than a child. 

Springfield is old enough to have a historic flavor 
and social traditions ; perhaps it might be called a 
Kentucky flavor, so largely did settlers from Kentucky 
determine it. There was a leisurely element in it, and 
it produced a large number of men prominent in poli- 
tics and in the law, and women celebrated for beauty 
and spirit. It was a hospitable society, with a certain 
tone of " family " that distinguished it from other fron- 
tier places, a great liking for the telling of racy stories, 
and a hearty enjoyment of life. The State has pro- 
vided a Gubernatorial residence which is at once spa- 
cious and pleasant, and is a mansion, with its present 
occupants, typical in a way of the old regime and of 
modern culture. 

To the country at large Springfield is distinguished 
as the home of Abraham Lincoln to an extent perhaps 
not fully realized by tlie residents of the growing capi- 
tal, with its ever new interests. And I was perhaps 
unreasonably disappointed in not finding that sense of 
his personality that I expected. It is, indeed, empha- 
sized by statues in the Capitol and by the great mau- 
soleum in the cemetery — an imposing structure, with 
an excellent statue in bronze, and four groups, relating 
to the civil war, of uncommon merit. But this great 
monumental show does not satisfy the personal long- 
ing of which I speak. Nor is the Lincoln residence 
16 



242 South and West. 

much more satisfactory in this respect. The plain 
two -story wooden house has been presented to the 
State by his son Robert, and is in charge of a custodian. 
And although the parlor is made a show-room and full 
of memorials, there is no atmosphere of the man about 
it. On Lincoln's departure for Washington the furni- 
ture was sold and the house rented, never to be again 
occupied by him. There is here nothing of that per- 
sonal presence that clings to the Hermitage, to Marsh- 
field, to Mount Vernon, to Monticello. Lincoln was 
given to the nation, and — a frequent occurrence in our 
uprooting business life — the home disappeared. Lin- 
coln was honored and beloved in Springfield as a man, 
but perhaps some of the feeling towards him as a party 
leader still lingers, although it has disappeared almost 
everywhere else in the country. Nowhere else was 
the personal partisanship hotter than in this city, and 
it is hardly to be expected that political foes in this 
generation should quite comprehend the elevation of 
Lincoln, in the consenting opinion of the world, among 
the greatest characters of all ages. It has happened 
to Lincoln that every year and a more intimate knowl- 
edge of his character have added to his fame and to 
the appreciation of his moral grandeur. There is a 
natural desire to go to some spot pre-eminently sacred 
to his personality. This may be his birthplace. At 
any rate, it is likely that before many years Kentucky 
will be proud to distinguish in some way the spot where 
the life began of the most illustrious man born in its 
borders. 

When we come to the capital of Indiana we have, 
in oflicial language, to report progress. One reason 



Three Capitals, 243 

assigned for the passing of emigrants throngli Indiana 
to Illinois was that the latter was a prairie country, 
more easily subdued than the more wooded region of 
Indiana. But it is also true that the sluggish, illiterate 
character of its early occupants turned aside the stream 
of AYestern emigration from its borders. There has 
been a great deal of philosophic speculation upon the 
acknowledged backwardness of civilization in Indiana, 
its slow development in institutions of education, and 
its slow change in rural life, compared with its sister 
States. But this concerns us less now than the awaken- 
ing which is visible at the capital and in some of the 
northern towns. T'he forests of hard timber which were 
an early disadvantage are now an important element 
in the State industry and wealth. Recent develoj)ments 
of coal-fields and the discovery of natural gas have 
given an impetus to manufacturing, which will power- 
fully stimulate agriculture and traffic, and open a new 
career to the State. 

Indianapolis, which stood still for some years in a 
reaction from real-estate speculation, is now a rapidly 
improving city, with a population of about 125,000. 
It is on the natural highway of the old National Turn- 
pike, and its central location in the State, in the midst 
of a rich agricultural district, has made it the centre 
of fifteen railway lines, and of active freight and pas- 
senger traffic. These lines are all connected for freight 
purposes by a belt road, over which pass about 5000 
freight cars daily. This belt road also does an enor- 
mous business for the stock-yards, and its convenient 
line is rapidly filling up with manufacturing establish- 
ments. As a consequence of these facilities the trade 
of the city in both wholesale and retail houses is good 



'2U SovtJi and Wtst. 

and inereasincr. With tliis increase of business there 
has been an accession of banking capital. The four 
national and t^o private banks have an aggregate 
capital of about three millions, and the Clearing-house 
report of 1SS7 showed a business of about one hundred 
millions, an increase of nearly fifty per cent, over the 
preceding year. But the individual prosperity is large- 
ly due to the building and loan associations, of which 
there are nearly one hundred, with an aggregate capi- 
tal of seven millions, the loans of which exceed those 
of the banks. These take the place of s:ivings-banks, 
encourage the purchase of homeste^ads, and are pre- 
ventives of strikes and labor troubles in the factories. 

The people of Indianapolis call their town a Park 
City. Occupying a level plain. its streets (the principal 
ones with a noble width of ninety feet) intersect each 
other at right angles; but in the centre of the city is a 
Circle Park of several acres, from which radiate to the 
four qu;vrters of the town avenues ninety feet broad 
that relieve the monotony of the right lines. These 
streets are for the most part well shaded, and getting 
to be well paved, lincvl with pleas;iut but not ambitious 
residences, so that the whole aspect of the city is open 
and agreeable. The K'st residences are within a few 
squares of the most active business stivets, and if the 
city has not the distinction of palaces, it has fewer 
poor and shabby quarters than most other towns of its 
size. In the Circle Park, where now stands a statue 
of Governor Morton, is to be erected immediately the 
Soldiers' Monument, at a cost of $250,000. 

The city is fortunate in its public buildings. The 
County Court-house (^which ci^st $1, 600,000 "i and City 
Hall are lK)th fine buildings; in the latter are the city 



Three CapititU. !245 

markets, and abovo, a iioblo :uiditoriiim with seats for 
4000 people. But the State Capitol, just tinished with- 
in the appropriation of $2,000,000, is pre-eminent among 
State Capitols in many resjHvts. It is built of the Bed- 
ford limestone, one of the best materials both for color 
and endurance found in the country. It follows the 
American plan of two wings and a dome: but it is fine- 
ly proportioned: and the exterior. with rows of grace- 
ful Corinthian columns above the basement story, is 
altogether pleasing. The interior is spacious and im- 
pressive, the Chambers -fine, the furnishing solid and in 
gooil taste, with nowhere any over-ornamentation or 
petty details to mar the geuenil noble oA'eet. The 
State Libniry contains, besides the law-books, about 
20,000 misoellanei">us volumes. 

When Matthew Arnold tirst came to New York the 
place in the West about which he expressed the most 
curiosity was Indianapolis: that he s:iid he must see, if 
no other city. He had no knowledge of the place, and 
could give no reason for his preference except that the 
name had always had a fascination for him. He found 
there, however, a very extensive book-store, where his 
own works were sold in numbers that pleased and sur- 
prised him. The shop has a large miscellaneous stock, 
and does a large jobbing and retail business, but the 
miscellaneous books dealt in are mostly cheap reprints 
of English works, with very tew American copyright 
books. This is a signidcant comment on the languish- 
ing state of the market for works of American authors 
in the absence of an international copyright law. 

The city is not behind any other in educational ef- 
forts. In its live free public libraries are over 70,000 
volumes. The citv has a hundred churches and a viij- 



24:6 South and West. 

orous Young Men's Christian Association, which cost 
$75,000. Its private schools have an excellent reputa- 
tion. There are 20,000 children registered of school 
age, and 11,000 in daily attendance in twenty -eight 
free-school houses. In methods of efficacy these are 
equal to any in the Union, as is shown by the fact 
that there are reported in the city only 325 persons 
between the ages of six and twenty-one unable to read 
and Avrite. The average cost of instruction for each 
pupil is $1 9.64 a year. In regard to advanced methods 
and manual training, Indianapolis schools claim to be 
pioneers. 

The latest reports show educational activity in the 
State as well as in the capital. In 1886 the revenues 
expended in public schools were about 85, 000,000. 
The State supports the Indiana University at Bloom- 
ington, with about 300 students, the Agricultural Col- 
lege at Lafayette, with over 300, and a normal school 
at Terre Haute, with an attendance of about 500. 
There are, besides, seventeen private colleges and sev- 
eral other normal schools. In 1886 the number of 
school-children enrolled in the State was 506,000, of 
whom 346,000 were in daily attendance. To those 
familiar with Indiana these figures show a greatly in- 
creased interest in education. 

Several of the State benevolent institutions are in 
Indianapolis : a hospital for the insane, which cost 
$1,200,000, and accommodates 1600 patients; an asy- 
lum for the blind, which has 132 pupils; and a school 
for deaf-mutes which cost $500,000, and has about 
400 scholars. The novel institution, however, that I 
saw at Indianapolis is a reformatory for women and 
girls, controlled entirely by women. The board of 



Three Cajpitah. 247 

trustees are women, the superintendent, physician, and 
keepers are women. In one building, but in separate 
departments, were the female convicts, 42 in number, 
several of them respectable - looking elderly women 
who had killed their husbands, and about 150 young 
girls. The convicts and the girls — who are committed 
for restraint and reform — never meet except in chapel, 
but it is more than doubtful if it is wise for the State 
to subject girls to even this sort of contiguity with 
convicts, and to the degradation of penitentiary sug- 
gestions. The establishment is very neat and well 
ordered and well administered. The work of the prison 
is done by the convicts, who are besides kept employed 
at sewing and in the laundry. The girls in the re- 
formatory work half a day, and are in school the other 
half. 

This experiment of the control of a State-prison by 
women is regarded as doubtful by some critics, who 
say that women will obey a man when they will not 
obey a woman. Female convicts, because they have 
fallen lower than men, or by reason of their more 
nervous organization, are commonly not so easily con- 
trolled as male convicts, and it is insisted that they 
indulge in less "tantrums" under male than under 
female authority. This is denied by the superintend- 
ent of this prison, though she has incorrigible cases 
who can only be controlled by solitary confinement. 
She has daily religious exercises, Bible reading and 
exposition, and a Sunday-school; and she doubts if she 
could control the convicts without this religious influ- 
ence. It not only has a daily quieting effect, but has 
resulted in several cases in "conversion." There are 
in the institution several girls and women of color. 



:?4S Stntth and We^. 

and I asked the superintoudent it* the white inmates 
exhibited any prejudice agtunst them on account of 
their color. To my surj^rise, the answer was that the 
contrary is the case. The whites look up to the colored 
eirls, and seem either to have a respect for them or to 
be fascinated by them. This surprising statement was 
supplemented by another, that the influence of the 
ooloreii girls on the whites is not good; the white girl 
who seeks the company of the colorevl girl deterionites. 
and the colored girl does not change. 

ludiiinapolis, Avhich is attractive by reason of a cli- 
mate that avoids extremes, bases its manufacturing and 
its business prosperity upon the large coal-beds lying 
to the west and south of it, the splendid and very 
extensive quarries of Bedford limestone contiguous to 
the coal-tields, the abundant supply of various sorts 
of han.i-wood for the making of furniture, and the 
recent discover\- of natural gas. The gas-field region, 
which is siiid to be very much larger than any other 
in the country, lies to the north-west, and comes within 
eight miles of the city. Pipes are iilready laid to the 
city limits, and the whole heating and manufacturing 
of the city will soon \v done by the g:is. I saw this 
fuel in use in a large and successful pottery, where are 
made superior glazeii and encaustic tiles, and nothing 
could be better for the purpose. The heat in the kilns 
is intense; it can be perfectly regulated: as fuel the 
iras is fr\>e from smoke and smut, and its cost is merely 
nominal. The excitement over this new agent is at 
present extniorvlinary. The tield where it has been 
found is so extensive as to make the supply seem inex- 
haustible. It was first discovered in Indiana at Eaton, 
in Delaware Countv,iu 1SS(5. From Jauuarv 1, ISST, 



Three Capitals, 249 

to February, 1888, it is reported that 1000 wells were 
opened in the gas territory, and that 245 companies 
were organized for various manufactures, with an 
aggregate capital of $25,000,000. Whatever the fig- 
ures may be, there are the highest expectations of 
immense increase of manufactures in Indianapolis and 
in all the gas region. Of some effects of this revolu- 
tion in fuel we may speak when we come to the gas 
wells of Ohio. 

I had conceived of Columbus as a rural capital, 
pleasant and slow, rather a village than a city. I was 
surprised to find a city of 80,000 people, growing Avith 
a rapidity astonishing even for a Western town, with 
miles of prosperous business blocks (High Street is 
four miles long), and wide avenues of residences ex- 
tending to suburban parks. Broad Street, with its 
four rows of trees and fine houses and beautiful lawns, 
is one of the handsomest avenues in the country, and 
it is only one of many that are attractive. The Capi- 
tol Square, with several good buildings about it, makes 
an agreeable centre of the city. Of the Capitol build- 
ing not much is to be said. The exterior is not wholly 
bad, but it is surmounted by a truncated something 
that is neither a dome nor a revolving turret, and the 
interior is badly arranged for room, light, and ventila- 
tion. Space is wasted, and many of the rooms, among 
them the relic -room and the flag -room, are incon- 
venient and almost inaccessible. The best is the 
room of the Supreme Court, which has attached a 
large law library. The general State Library con- 
tains about 54,000 volumes, with a fair but not large 
proportion of Western history. 



1^50 South and Wist. 

Columbus is a city of ohurclios, of very fine public 
schools, of many clubs, literary and social, iu which 
the intellectual element predominates, and of an in- 
telligent, retined, and most hospitable society. Here 
one may study the educational and charitable insti- 
tutions of the State, many of the more important of 
which are in the city, and also the politics. It was 
Ohio's hard fate to be for many years an** October 
State," and the battle -tield and corruption -tield of 
many outside intluences. This no doubt demoralized 
the politics of the State, and lowered the tone of pub- 
lic morality. With the removal of the cause of this 
decline, I believe the tone is being raised. Recent 
trials for election frauds, and the rehabilitation of 
the Cincinnati police, show that a better spirit pre- 
vails. 

Ohio is growing in wealth as it is in population, 
and is in many directions an ambitious and progress- 
ive State. Judged by its institutions of benevolence 
and of economies, it is a leading State. Xo other 
State provides more liberally for its unfortunates, in 
asvlums for the insane, the blind, the deaf-mutes, the 
idiotic, the young waifs and strays, nor shows a more 
iutcUii^ent comprehension of the legitimate functions 
of a oTcat commonwealth, in the creation of boards 
of education and of charities and of health, in a State 
inspection of workshops and factories, in establishing 
bureaus of meteorology and of forestry, a fish commis- 
sion, and an agricultural experiment station. The State 
has thirtv-four colleges and universities, a public-school 
system which has abolished distinctions of color, and 
which bv the reports is as etficient as any in the Union. 
Cincinnati,the moral tone of which, the Ohio people say, 



Three CajpitaU, "2^1 

is not fairly ropivsentod by its newspapers, is famous 
the world over for its cultivation in music and its prog- 
ress in the tine and industrial arts. It would be possi- 
ble for a State to have and be all this and yet rise in 
the general scale of civilization only to a splendid me- 
diocrity, without the higher institutions of pure learn- 
ing, and without a very high standard of public moral- 
ity. Ohio is in no less danger of materialism, with all 
its diffused intelligence, than other States. There is a 
recognizable limit to what a ditfused level of educa- 
tion, say in thirty-four colleges, can do for the higher 
life of a State. I heard an address in the Capitol by 
ex -President Hayes on the expediency of adding a 
manual-training school to the Ohio State University 
at Columbus. The comment of some of the legisla- 
tors on it was that we have altogether too much 
book-learning; what we need is workshops in our 
schools and colleges. It seems to a stranger that 
whatever lirst-class industrial and technical schools 
Ohio needs, it needs more the higher education, and 
the teaching of philosophy, logic, and ethics. In 
ISSG Governor Foraker sent a special message to 
the Legislature pointing out the fact that notwith- 
standing the increase of wealth in the State, the rev- 
enue was inadequate to the expenditure, principally 
by reason of the undervaluation of taxable property 
(there being a yearly discline in the reported value of 
personal property), and a fraudulent evasion of taxes. 
There must have been a wide insensibility to the 
wrong of cheating the State to have produced this 
state of things, and one cannot but think that it went 
along with the low political tone before mentioned. 
Of course Ohio is not a solitary sinner amono- States 



252 South and West 

in this evasion of duty, but she helps to point the 
moral that the higher life of a State needs a great 
deal of education that is neither commercial nor in- 
dustrial nor simply philanthropic. 

It is impossible and unnecessary for the purposes 
of this paper to speak of many of the public institu- 
tions of the State, even of those in the city. But 
educators everywhere may study with profit the man- 
agement of the public schools under the City Board 
of Education, of which Mr. R. W. Stevenson is super- 
intendent. The High-school, of over 600 pupils, is 
especially to be commended. Manual training is not 
introduced into the schools, and the present better 
sentiment is against it; but its foundation, drawing, 
is thoroughly taught from the primaries up to the 
High -school, and the exhibits of the work of the 
schools of all grades in modelling, drawing, and form 
and color studies, which were made last year in New 
York and Chicago, gave these Columbus schools a 
very high rank in the country. Any visitor to them 
must be impressed with the intelligence of the meth- 
ods employed, the apprehension of modern notions, 
and also the conservative spirit of common-sense. 

The Ohio State University has an endowment from 
the State of over half a million dollars, and a source of 
ultimate wealth in its great farm and grounds, which 
must increase in value as the city extends. It is a very 
well equii^ped institution for the study of the natural 
sciences and agriculture, and might easily be built up 
into a university in all departments, worthy of the 
State. At present it has 335 students, of whom 150 
are in the academic department, 41 in special practical 
courses, and 143 in the preparatory school. All the 



Three Capitals. 253 

students are organized in companies, under an officer 
of the United States, for military discipline; the uni- 
form, the drill, the lessons of order and obedience, are 
invaluable in the transforming of carriage and man- 
ners. The University has a museum of geology which 
ranks among the important ones of the country. It is 
a pity that a consolidation of other State institutions 
with this cannot be brought about. 

The Ohio Penitentiary at Columbus is an old build- 
ing, not in keeping with the modern notions of prison 
construction. In 1887 it had about 1300 convicts, some 
100 less than in the preceding year. The management 
is subject to political changes, and its officers have to 
be taken from various parts of the State at the dicta- 
tion of political workers. Under this system the best 
management is liable to be upset by an election. The 
special interest in the prison at this time was in the ob- 
servation of the working of the Parole Law. Since the 
passage of the Act in May,1885, 283 prisoners have been 
paroled, and while several of the convicts have been 
returned for a violation of parole, nearly the whole 
number are reported as law-abiding citizens. The man- 
agers are exceedingly pleased with the working of the 
law; it promotes good conduct in the prison, and re- 
duces the number in confinement. The reduction of 
the number of convicts in 1887 from the former year 
was ascribed partially to the passage of the General 
Sentence Law in 1 884, and the Habitual Crimes Act 
in 1885. The criminals dread these laws, the first be- 
cause it gives no fixed time to build their hopes upon, 
but all depends upon their previous record and good 
conduct in prison, while the latter affects the incor- 
rigible, who are careful to shun the State after be- 



25^ South and We^t 

ing convicted twice, and avoid imprisonment for life. 
The success of these laws and the condition of the 
State finances delay the work on the Intermediate 
Prison, or Reformatory, begun at Mansfield. This 
Reformatory is intended for first offenders, and has 
the distinct purpose of prevention of further deterio- 
ration, and of reformation by means of the discipline 
of education and labor. The success of the tentative 
laws in this direction, as applied to the general pris- 
ons, is, in fact, a strong argument for the carrying out 
of the Mansfield scheme. 

There cannot be a more interesting study of the 
"misfits" of humanity than that offered in the Insti- 
tution for Feeble-minded Youth, under the superin- 
tendence of Dr. G. A. Doren. Here are Tlo imbeciles 
in all stages of development from absolute mental 
and physical incapacity. There is scarcely a problem 
that exists in education, in the relation of the body 
and mind, in the inheritance of mental and physical 
traits, in regard to the responsibility for crime, in 
psychology or physiology, that is not here illustrated. 
It is the intention of the school to teach the idiot 
child some trade or occupation that will make him to 
some degree useful, and to carry him no further than 
the common branches in learning. The first impres- 
sion, I think, made upon a visitor is the almost in- 
variable physical deformity that attends imbecility^ 
ill-proportioned, distorted bodies, dwarfed, misshapen 
gelatinoids, with bones that have no stiffness. The 
next impression is the preponderance of the animal 
nature, the persistence of the lower passions, and the 
absence of moral qualities in the general immaturity. 
And perhaps the next impression is of the extraordi- 



Three Capitals. 255 

nary effect that physical training has in awakening the 
mind, and how soon the discipline of the institution 
creates the power of self-control. From almost blank 
imbecility and utter lack of self-restraint the majori- 
ty of these children, as we saw them in their school- 
rooms and workshops, exhibited a sense of order, of 
entire decency, and very considerable intelligence. It 
was demonstrated that most imbeciles are capable of 
acquiring the rudiments of an education and of learn- 
ing some useful occupation. Some of the boys work 
on the farm, others learn trades. The boys in the 
shoe-shop were making shoes of excellent iinisli. The 
girls do plain sewing and house-work apparently al- 
most as well as girls of their age outside. Two or 
three things that we saw may be mentioned to show 
the scope of the very able management and the capac- 
ities of the pupils. There was a drill of half a hun- 
dred boys and girls in the dumb-bell exercise, to mu- 
sic, under the leadership of a pupil, which in time, 
grace, and exact execution of complicated movements 
would have done credit to any school. The institu- 
tion has two bands, one of brass and one of strings, 
which perform very well. The string band played 
for dancing in the large amusement hall. Several 
hundred children were on the floor dancing cotillons, 
and they went through the variety of changes not 
only in perfect time and decorum, but without any 
leader to call the figures. It would have been a re- 
markable performance for any children. There were 
many individual cases of great and deplorable inter- 
est. Cretins, it was formerly supposed, were only 
born in mountainous regions. There are three here 
born in Ohio. There were five imbeciles of what I 



25C) SoutTi and West 

should call the ape type, all of one Ohio family. TVo 
of them were the boys exhibited some years ago by 
Barimm as the Aztec children — the last of an extinct 
race, lie exhibited them as a boy and a girl. When 
they had grown a little too large to show as children, 
or the public curiosity was satisfied about the extinct 
race, he exhibited them as wild Australians. 

The humanity of so training these imbeciles that 
they can have some enjoyment of life, and be occa- 
sionally of some use to their relations, is undeniable. 
But since the State makes this effort in the survival 
of the unfittest, it must go further and provide a per- 
manent home for them. The girls who have learned 
to read and write and sew and do house-work, and are 
of decent appearance, as many of them are, are apt to 
marry when they leave the institution. Their offspring 
are invariably idiots. I saw in this school the children 
of mothers who had been trained here. It is no more 
the intention of the State to increase the number of 
imbeciles than it is the number of criminals. Many 
of our charitable and penal institutions at present do 
both. 

I should like to approach the subject of Natural 
Gas in a proper spirit, but I have neither the imagi- 
nation nor the rhetoric to do justice to the expecta- 
tions formed of it. In the restrained language of one 
of the inhabitants of Findlay, its people "have caught 
the divine afflatus which came with the discovery of 
natural gas." If Findlay had only natural gas, "she 
would be the peer, if not the superior, of any muni- 
cipality on earth ;" but she has much more, " and in 
all things has no equal or superior between the oceans 



Three Capitals: 257 

and the lakes and the gulf, and is marching on to the 
grandest destiny ever prepared for any people, in any 
land, or in any period, since the morning stars first 
sang together, and the flowers in the garden of Eden 
budded and blossomed for man." In fact, "this she 
has been doing in the past two j^ears in the grandest 
and most satisfactory w^ay, and that she will continue 
to progress is as certain as the stars that hold their 
midnight revel around the throne of Omnipotence." 

Notwithstanding this guarded announcement, it is 
evident that the discovery of natural gas has begun a 
revolution in fuel, which will have permanent and far- 
reaching economic and social consequences, whether 
the supply of gas is limited or inexhaustible. 

Those who have once used fuel in this form are not 
likely to return to the crude and wasteful heating by 
coal. All the cities and large towns west of the Al- 
leghanies are made disagreeable by bituminous coal 
smoke. The extent of this annoyance and its detrac- 
tion from the pleasure of daily living cannot be exag- 
gerated. The atmosphere is more or less vitiated, and 
the sky obscured, houses, furniture, clothing, are dirty, 
and clean linen and clean hands and face are not ex- 
pected. All this is changed where gas is used for fuel. 
The city becomes cheerful, and the people can see each 
other. But this is not all. One of the great burdens 
of our Northern life, fire building and replenishing, 
disappears, house-keeping is simplified, the expense of 
servants reduced, cleanliness restored. Add to this 
that in the gas regions the cost of fuel is merely nom- 
inal, and in towns distant some thirty or forty miles 
it is not half that of coal. It is easy to see that this 
revolution in fuel will make as great a change in so- 
17 



258 South and West. 

cial life as in manufacturing, and that all the change 
may not be agreeable. This natural gas is a very sub- 
tle fluid, somewhat difficult to control, though I have 
no doubt that invention will make it as safe in our 
houses as ilhiminating gas is. So far as I have seen 
its use, the heat from it is intense and withering. In 
a closed stove it is intolerable; in an open grate, with 
a simulated pile of hard coal or logs, it is better, but 
much less agreeable than soft coal or wood. It does 
not, as at present used, promote a good air in the room, 
and its intense dryness ruins the furniture. But its 
cheapness, convenience, and neatness will no doubt 
prevail; and we are entering upon a gas age, in which, 
for the sake of progress, we shall doubtless surr<}nder 
something that will cause us to look back to the more 
primitive time with regret. If the gas-wells fail, arti- 
ficial gas for fuel will doubtless be manufactured. 

I went up to the gas-fields of northern Ohio in com- 
pany with Prof. Edward Orton, the State Geologist, 
who has made a study of the subject, and pretty well 
defined the fields of Indiana and Ohio. The gas is 
found at a depth of between 1100 and 1200 feet, after 
passing through a great body of shale and encounter- 
ing salt-water, in a porous Trenton limestone. The 
drilling and tubing enter this limestone several feet to 
get a good holding. This porous limestone holds the 
gas like a sponge, and it rushes forth with tremendous 
force when released. It is now well settled that these 
are reservoirs of gas that are tapped, and not sources 
of perpetual supply by constant manufacture. How 
large the supply may be in any case cannot be told, 
but there is a limit to it. It can be exhausted, like a 
vein of coal. But the fields are so large, both in Indi- 



Three Capitals.- 259 

ana and Ohio, that it seems probable that by sinking 
new wells the supply will be continued for a long time. 
The evidence that it is not inexhaustible in any one 
well is that in all in which the flow of gas has been 
tested at intervals the force of pressure is found to 
diminish. For months after the discovery the wells 
were allowed to run to waste, and billions of feet of 
gas were lost. A better economy now prevails, and 
this wastefulness is stopped. The wells are all under 
control, and large groups of them are connected by 
common service-pipes. The region about Fostoria is 
organized under the North-western Gas Company, and 
controls a large territory. It supplies the city of To- 
ledo, which uses no other fuel, through pipes thirty 
miles long, Fremont, and other towns. The loss per 
mile in transit through the pipes is now known, so 
that the distance can be calculated at which it will 
pay to send it. I believe that this is about fifty to 
sixty miles. The gas when it comes from the well is 
about the temperature of 32° Fahr., and the common 
pressure is 400 pounds to the square inch. The veloc- 
ity with which it rushes, unchecked, from the pipe at 
the mouth of the well may be said to be about that of 
a minie-ball from an ordinary rifle. The Ohio area 
of gas is between 2000 and 3000 square miles. The 
claim for the Indiana area is that it is 20,000 square 
miles, but the geologists make it much less. 

The speculation in real estate caused by this discov- 
ery has been perhaps without parallel in the history of 
the State, and, as is usual in such cases, it is now in a 
lull, waiting for the promised developments. But these 
have been almost as marvellous as the speculation. 
Findlay was a sleepy little village in the black swamp 



260 South and West. 

district, one of the most backward regions of Ohio. 
For many years there had been surface indications of 
gas, and there is no^y a house standing in the city 
which used gas for fuel forty years ago. When the 
first gas-well was opened, ten years ago, the village 
had about 4500 inhabitants. It has now probably 15,- 
000, it is a city, and its limits have been extended to 
cover an area six miles long by four miles wide. This 
is dotted over with hastily built houses, and is rapidly 
being occupied by manufacturing establishments. The 
city owns all the gas-wells, and supplies fuel to facto- 
ries and private houses at the simple cost of maintain- 
ing the service-pipes. So rapid has been the growth 
and the demand for gas that there has not been time 
to put all the pipes underground, and they are encoun- 
tered on the surface all over the region. The town is 
pervaded by the odor of the gas, which is like that of 
petroleum, and the traveller is notified of his nearness 
to the town by the smell before he can see the houses. 
The surface pipes, hastily laid, occasionally leak, and 
at these weak places the gas is generally ignited in 
order to prevent its tainting the atmosphere. This 
immediate neighborhood has an oil -field contiguous 
to the gas, plenty of limestone (the kilns are burned 
by gas), good building stone, clay fit for making bricks 
and tiles, and superior hard-wood forests. The cheap 
fuel has already attracted here manufacturing, indus- 
tries of all sorts, and new plants are continually made. 
I have a list of over thirty different mills and factories 
which are either in full operation or getting under way. 
Among the most interesting of these are the works for 
making window-glass and table glass. The superiority 
of this fuel for the irlass-f urnaces seems to be admitted. 



Three Capitals. 2G1 

Although the wells about Findlay are under con- 
trol, the tubing is anchored, and the awful force is 
held under by gates and levers of steel, it is impossi- 
ble to escape a feeling of awe in this region at the 
subterranean energies which seem adequate to blow 
the whole country heavenward. Some of the wells 
were opened for us. Opening a well is unscrewing 
the service-pipe and letting the full force of the gas 
issue from the pipe at the mouth of the well. AVhen 
one of these wells is thus opened the whole town is 
aware of it by the roaring and the quaking of the air. 
The first one exhibited was in a field a mile and a half 
from the city. At the first freedom from the screws 
and clamps the gas rushed out in such density that it 
was visible. Although we stood several rods from it, 
the roar was so great that one could not make him- 
self heard shoutino: in the ear of his neiG:hbor. The 
geologist stuffed cotton in his ears and tied a shawl 
about his head, and, assisted by the chemist, stood close 
to the pipe to measure the flow. The chemist, who had 
not taken the precaution to protect himself, was quite 
deaf for some time after the experiment. A four-inch 
pipe, about sixty feet in length, was then screwed on, 
and the gas ignited as it issued from the end on the 
ground. The roaring was as before. For several feet 
from the end of the tube there was no flame, but be- 
yond was a sea of fire sweeping the ground and riot- 
ing high in the air — billows of red and yellow and blue 
flame, fierce and hot enough to consume everj^thing 
within reach. It was an awful display of power. 

We had a like though only a momentary display at 
the famous Karg well, an eight-million-feet well. This 
could only be turned on for a few seconds at a time, 
for it is in connection with the general system. If the 



262 South and West 

gas is turned off, the fires in houses and factories would 
go out, and if it were turned on again without notice, 
the rooms would be full of gas, and an explosion follow 
an attempt to relight it. This danger is now being re- 
moved by the invention of an automatic valve in the 
pipe supplying each fire, which will close and lock when 
the flow of gas ceases, and admit no more gas until it 
is opened. The ordinary pressure for house service is 
about two pounds to the square inch. The Karg well 
is on the bank of the creek, and the discharge-pipe 
through which the gas (though not in its full force) 
was turned for our astonishment extends over the wa- 
ter. The roar was like that of Niagara; all the town 
shakes when the Karg is loose. When lighted, billows 
of flame rolled over the water, brilliant in color and 
fantastic in form, with a fury and rage of conflagra- 
tion enough to strike the spectator with terror. I have 
never seen any other display of natural force so im- 
pressive as this. When this flame issues from an up- 
right pipe, the great mass of fire rises eighty feet into 
the air, leaping and twisting in fiendish fury. For six 
weeks after this well was first opened its constant roar- 
ing shook the nerves of the town, and by night its 
flaming torch lit up the heaven and banished darkness. 
With the aid of this new agent anything seems possible. 
The feverishness of speculation will abate; many 
anticipations will not be realized. It will be discov- 
ered that there is a limit to manufacturing, even with 
fuel that costs next to nothing. The supply of natural 
gas no doubt has its defined limits. But nothing seems 
more certain to me than that gas, manufactured if not 
natural, is to be the fuel of the future in the West, and 
that the importance of this economic change in social 
life is greater than we can at present calculate. 



I 



XII. 
CINCINNATI AND LOUISVILLE. 

Cincinnati is a city that has a past. As Daniel 
"Webster said, that at least is secure. Among the 
many places that have been and are the Athens of 
America, this was perhaps the first. As long ago as 
the first visit of Charles Dickens to this country it 
was distinguished as a town of refinement as well as 
cultivation; and the novelist, who saw little to admire, 
though much to interest him in our raw country, was 
captivated by this little village on the Ohio. It was 
already the centre of an independent intellectual life, 
and produced scholars, artists, writers, who subsequent- 
ly went east instead of west. According to tradition, 
there seems to have been early a tendency to free 
thought, and a response to the movement which, for 
lack of a better name, was known in Massachusetts as 
transcendentalism. 

The evolution of Cincinnati seems to have been a 
little peculiar in American life. It is a rich city, 
priding itself on the solidity of its individual fortunes 
and business, and the freedom of its real property 
from foreign mortgages. Usually in our development 
the pursuit of wealth comes first, and then all other 
things are added thereto, as we read the promise. In 
Cincinnati there seems to have been a very consider- 
able cultivation first in time, and we have the spectacle 
of what wealth will do in the way of the sophistication 



264: South and West. 

and materialization of society. Ordinarily we have 
the process of an uncultivated community gradually 
working itself out into a more or less ornamented and 
artistic condition as it gets money. The reverse proc- 
ess we might see if the philosophic town of Concord, 
Massachusetts, should become the home of rich men 
engaged in commerce and manufacturing. I may be 
all wrong in my notion of Cincinnati, but there is a 
sort of tradition, a remaining flavor of old-time culture 
before the town became commercially so important 
as it was before the war. 

It is difficult to think of Cincinnati as in Ohio. I 
cannot find their similarity of traits. Indeed, I think 
that generally in the State there is a feeling that it is 
an alien city; the general characteristics of the State 
do not flow into and culminate in Cincinnati as its 
metropolis. It has had somehow an independent life. 
If you look on a geologic map of the State, you see 
that the glacial drift, I believe it is called, which flowed 
over three-fourths of the State and took out its wrinkles 
did not advance into the south-west. And Cincinnati 
lies in the portion that was not smoothed into a kind 
of monotony. When a settlement was made here it 
was a good landing-place for trade up and down the 
river, and was probably not so much thought of as a 
distributing and receiving point for the interior north 
of it. Indeed, up to the time of the war, it looked to 
the South for its trade, and naturally, even when the 
line of war was drawn, a good deal of its sympathies 
lay in the direction of its trade. It had become a 
great city, and grown rich both in trade and manu- 
factures, but in the decline of steamboating and in 
the era of railways there were physical difficulties in 



I 



I 



Cincinnati and Louisville. 265 

the way of adapting itself easily to the new condi- 
tions. It was not easy to bring the railways down 
the irregular hills and to find room for them on the 
landing. The city itself had to contend with great 
natural obstacles to get adequate foothold, and its 
radiation over, around, and among the hills produced 
some novel features in business and in social life. 

What Cincinnati would have been, with its early 
culture and its increasing wealth, if it had not become 
so largely German in its population, we can only con- 
jecture. The German element was at once conserva- 
tive as to improvements and liberalizing, as the phrase 
is, in theology and in life. Bituminous coal and the 
Germans combined to make a novel American city. 
When Dickens saw the place it was a compact, smiling 
little city, with a few country places on the hills. It 
is now a scattered city of country places, with a little 
nucleus of beclouded business streets. The traveller 
does not go there to see the city, but to visit the 
suburbs, climbing into them, out of the smoke and 
grime, by steam " inclines " and grip railways. The 
city is indeed difficult to see. When you are in it, by 
the river, you can see nothing; when you are outside 
of it you are in any one of half a dozen villages, in 
regions of parks and elegant residences, altogether 
charming and geographically confusing; and if from 
some commanding point you try to recover the city 
idea, you look down upon black roofs half hid in black 
smoke, through which the fires of factories gleam, and 
where the colored Ohio rolls majestically along under 
a dark canopy. Looked at in one way, the real Cin- 
cinnati is a German city, and you can only study its 
true character " Over the Rhine," and see it success- 



266 South and West 

fully through the bottom of an upturned beer glass. 
Looked at another way, it is mainly an affair of elegant 
suburbs, beautifully wooded hills, pleasure-grounds, 
and isolated institutions of art or charity. I am thank- 
ful that there is no obligation on me to depict it. 

It would probably be described as a city of art 
rather than of theology, and one of rural homes rather 
than metropolitan society. Perhaps the German ele- 
ment has had something to do in giving it its musical 
character, and the early culture may have determined 
its set more towards art than religion. As the cloud 
of smoke became thicker and thicker in the old city 
those who disliked this gloom escaped out upon the 
hills in various directions. Many, of course, still cling 
to the solid ancestral houses in the city, but the coun- 
try movement was so general that church-going be- 
came an affair of some difficulty, and I can imagine 
that the church -going habit was a little broken up 
while the new neicjhborhoods were forminfy on the 
hills and in the winding valleys, and before the new 
churches in the suburbs were erected. Congregations 
were scattered, and society itself was more or less dis- 
integrated. Each suburb is fairly accessible from the 
centre of the city, either by a winding valley or by a 
bold climb up a precipice, but owing to the configura- 
tion of the ground, it is difficult to get from one 
suburb to another without returning to the centre 
and taking a fresh start. This geographical hinder- 
ance must necessarily interfere with social life, and 
tend to isolation of families, or to merely neighbor- 
hood association. 

Although much yet remains to be done in the way 
of good roads, nature and art have combined to make 



Cincinnati and Louisville. 267 

the suburbs of the city wonderfully beautiful. The 
surface is most picturesquely broken, the forests are 
fine, from this point and that there are views pleasing, 
poetic, distant, perfectly satisfying in form and variety, 
and in advantageous situations taste has guided wealth 
in the construction of stately houses, having ample 
space in the midst of manorial parks. You are not out 
of sight of these fine places in any of the suburbs, and 
there are besides, in every direction, miles of streets 
of pleasing homes. I scarcely know whether to j^re- 
fer Clifton, with its wide sweeping avenues rounding 
the hills, or the perhaps more commanding heights of 
Walnut, nearer the river, and overlooking Kentucky. 
On the East Walnut Hills is a private house worth 
going far to see for its color. It is built of broken 
limestone, the chance find of a quarry, making the 
richest walls I have anywhere seen, comparable to 
nothing else than the exquisite colors in the rocks of 
the Yellowstone Falls, as I recall them in Mr. Moran's 
original studies. 

If the city itself could substitute gas fuel for its 
smutty coal, I fancy that, with its many solid homes 
and stately buildings, backed by the picturesque hills, 
it would be a city at once curious and attractive to 
the view. The visitor who ascends from the river as 
far as Fourth Street is surprised to find room for fair 
avenues, and many streets and buildings of mark. 
The Probasco fountain in another atmosphere would 
be a thing of beauty, for one may go far to find so 
many grou])s in bronze so good. The Post - ofiice 
building is one of the best of the Mullet-headed era 
of our national architecture — so good generally that 
one wonders that the architect thought it expedient to 



268 South and West. 

destroy the effect of the monolith cohimns by cutting 
them to resemble superimposed blocks. A very re- 
markable building also is the new Chamber of Com- 
merce structure, from Richardson's design, massive, 
mediaeval, challenging attention, and compelling criti- 
cism to give way to genuine admiration. There are 
other buildings, public and private, that indicate a 
city of solid growth; and the activity of its strong 
Chamber of Commerce is a guarantee that its growth 
will be maintained with the enterprise common to 
American cities. The effort is to make manufacturing 
take the place in certain lines of business that, as in 
the item of pork-packing, has been diverted by vari- 
ous causes. Money and effort have been freely given 
to regain the Southern trade interrupted by the war, 
and I am forced to believe that the success in this 
respect would have been greater if some of the city 
newspapers had not thought it all-important to manu- 
facture political capital by keeping alive old antago- 
nisms and prejudices. Whatever people may say, senti- 
ment does play a considerable part in business, and it 
is within the knowledge of the writer that prominent 
merchants in at least one Southern city have refused 
trade contracts that would have been advantageous to 
Cincinnati, on account of this exhibition of partisan 
sj)irit, as if the war were not over. Nothing would be 
more contemptible than to see a community selling its 
principles for trade ; but it is true that men will 
trade, other things being equal, w^here they are met 
with friendly cordiality and toleration, and where 
there is a spirit of helpfulness instead of suspicion. 
Professional politicians. North and South, may be 
able to demonstrate to their satisfaction that they 



» 



Cincinnati and Louisville. 269 

should have a chance to make a living, but they 
ask too much when this shall be at the expense of 
free-flowing trade, which is in itself the best solvent 
of any remaining alienation, and the surest disintegra- 
tor of the objectionable political solidity, and to the 
hinderance of that entire social and business good feel- 
ing which is of all things desirable and necessary in 
a restored and compacted Union. And it is as bad 
political as it is bad economic policy. As a matter of 
fact, the politicians of Kentucky are grateful to one 
or two Republican journals for aid in keeping their 
State "solid." It is a pity that the situation has its 
serious as well as its ridiculous aspect. 

Cincinnati in many respects is more an Eastern 
than a Western town; it is developing its own life, 
and so far as I could see, without much infusion of 
young fortune-hunting blood from the East. It has 
attained its population of about 275,000 by a slower 
growth than some other Western cities, and I notice 
in its statistical reports a pause rather than excite- 
ment since 1878-79-80. The valuation of real and 
personal property has kept about the same for nearly 
ten years (1886, real estate about 1129,000,000, per- 
sonal about 842,000,000), with a falling off in the per- 
sonalty, and a noticeable decrease in the revenue from 
taxation. At the same time manufacturing has in- 
creased considerably. In 1880 there was a capital of 
860,523,350, employing 74,798 laborers, with a prod- 
uct of 8148,957,280. In 1886 the capital was 876,- 
248,200, laborers 93,103, product 8190,722,153. The 
business at the Post-ofiice was a little less in 1886 
than in 1883. In the seven years ending with 188^ 
there was a considerable increase in banking capital, 



270 South and West 

wliicli reached in the city proper over ten millions, 
and there was an increase in clearings from 1881 to 
1886. 

It would teach us nothing to follow in detail the 
fluctuations of the various businesses in Cincinnati, 
either in appreciation or decline, but it may be noted 
that it has more than held its own in one of the great 
staples — leaf tobacco — and still maintains a leading 
position. Yet I must refer to one of the industries 
for the sake of an important experiment made in con- 
nection with it. This is the experiment of profit-shar- 
ing at Ivorydale, the establishment of Messrs. Procter 
and Gamble, now, I believe, the largest soap factory 
in the world. The soap and candle industry has al- 
ways been a large one in Cincinnati, and it has in- 
creased about seventy-five per cent, within the past 
two years. The proprietors at Ivorydale disclaim any 
intention of philanthropy in their new scheme — that 
is, the philanthropy that means giving something for 
nothing, as a charity: it is strictly a business opera- 
tion. It is an experiment that I need not say will be 
watched with a good deal of interest as a means of 
lessening the friction between the interests of capital 
and labor. The plan is this: Three trustees are named 
who are to declare the net profits of the concern ev- 
ery six months; for this purpose they are to have free 
access to the books and papers at all times, and they 
are to permit the employes to designate a book-keep- 
er to make an examination for them also. In deter- 
mining the net profits, interest on all capital invested 
is calculated as an expense at the rate of six per cent., 
and a reasonable salary is allowed to each member of 
the firm who gives his entire time to the business. In 



Cincinnati and Louisville. 271 

order to share in the profits, the employe must have 
been at work for three consecutive months, and must 
be at work when the semi-annual account is made up. 
All the men share whose wages have exceeded $5 a 
w^eek, and all the women whose wages have exceeded 
84.25 a week. The proportion divided to each employe 
is determined by the amount of wages earned; that is, 
the employes shall share as between themselves in the 
profits exactly as they have shared in the entire fund 
paid as wages to the whole body, excluding the first 
three months' wages. In order to determine the profits 
for distribution, the total amount of wages paid to all 
employes (except travelling salesmen, who do not share) 
is ascertained. The amount of all expenses, including 
interest and salaries, is ascertained, and the total net 
profits shall be divided between the firm and the em- 
ployes sharing in the fund. The amount of the net 
profit to be distributed will be that proportion of the 
whole net profit which will correspond to the propor- 
tion of the wages paid as compared with the entire 
cost of production and the expense of the business. 
To illustrate: If the wages paid to all employes shall 
equal twenty per cent, of the entire expenditure in the 
business, including interest and salaries of members of 
the firm, then twenty per cent, of the net profit will be 
distributed to employes. 

It will be noted that this plan promotes steadiness 
in work, stimulates to industry, and adds a most val- 
uable element of hopefulness to labor. As a business 
enterprise for the owners it is sound, for it makes 
every workman an interested party in increasing the 
profits of the firm — interested not only in produc- 
tion, but in the marketableness of the thing pro- 



272 South and West. 

duced. There have beeu two divisions under this 
pL^n. At the declaration of the first the workmen 
had no confidence in it; many of them would have 
sold their chances for a glass of beer. Thev expect- 
ed that " expenses " would make such a large figure 
that nothing would be left to divide. AVhen they 
received, as the good workmen did, considerable sums 
of money, life took on another aspect to them, and we 
may suppose that their confidence in fair dealing was 
raised. The experiment of a year has been entirely 
satisfactory; it has not only improved the class of 
employes, but has introduced into the establishment 
a spirit of industrial cheerfulness. Of course it is 
still an experiment. So long as business is good, all 
will go well; but if there is a bad six months, and no 
profits, it is impossible that suspicion should not arise. 
And there is another consideration: the publishing to 
the world that the business of six months was without 
profit might impair credit. But, on the other hand, 
this openness in legitimate business may be conta- 
gious, anei in the end promotive of a wider and more 
stable business confidence. Ivorydale is one of the 
best and most solidly built industrial establishments 
anywhere to be found, and doubly interesting for the 
intelligent attempt to solve the most difficult problem 
in modern society. The first semi-annual dividend 
amounted to about an eighth increase of wages. A 
girl who was earning five dollars a week would re- 
ceive as dividend about thirty dollars a year. I think 
it was not in my imagination that the laborers in 
this establishment worked with more than usual alac- 
rity, and seemed contented. If this plan shall pre- 
vent strikes, that alone will be as great a benefit to 



Cincinnati and Louisville, 273 

the workmen as to those who risk capital in employ- 
ing them. 

Probably to a stranger the chief interest of Cin- 
cinnati is not in its business enterprises, great as they 
are, but in another life just as real and important, but 
which is not always considered in taking account of 
the prosperity of a community — the development of 
education and of the fine arts. For a long time the 
city has had an independent life in art and in music. 
Whether a people can be saved by art I do not know. 
The pendulum is always swinging backward and for- 
ward, and we seem never to be able to be entliusiastic 
in one direction without losing something in another. 
The art of Cincinnati has a good deal the air of being 
indigenous, and the outcome in the arts of carving and 
design and in music has exhibited native vigor. The 
city has made itself a reputation for wood-carving and 
for decorative pottery. The Rockwood pottery, the 
private enterprise of Mrs. Bellamy Storer, is the only 
pottery in this country in which the instinct of beauty 
is paramount to the desire of profit. Here for a series 
of years experiments have been going on with clays 
and glazing, in regard to form and color, and in deco- 
ration purely for effect, which have resulted in pieces 
of marvellous interest and beauty. The effort has al- 
ways been to satisfy a refined sense rather than to 
cater to a vicious taste, or one for startling effects al- 
ready formed. I mean that the effort has not been to 
suit the taste of the market, but to raise that taste. 
The result is some of the most exquisite work in text- 
ure and color anywhere to be found, and I was glad to 
learn that it is gaining an appreciation which will not 
in this case leave virtue to be its own reward. 
18 



274: South and West. 

The various private attempts at art expression 
have been consolidated in a public Museum and an 
Art School, which are among the best planned and 
equipped in the country. The Museum Building in 
Eden Park, of which the centre pavilion and west 
wing are completed (having a total length of 214 
feet from east to west), is in Romanesque style, solid 
and pleasing, with exceedingly well -planned exhibi- 
tion-rooms and picture-galleries, and its collections 
are already choice and interesting. The fund was 
raised by the subscriptions of 455 persons, and 
amoimts to 8310,501, of which Mr. Charles R. West 
led off with the contribution of 8150,000, invested as 
a permanent fund. Xear this is the Art School, also 
a noble building, the gift of Mr. David Sinton, who 
in 1855 gave the Museum Association 875,000 for 
this purpose. It should be said that the original and 
liberal endowment of the Art School was made by 
Mr. Nicholas Longworth, in accordance with the wish 
of his father, and that the association also received a 
legacy of $40,000 from Mr. K. R. Springer. Alto- 
gether the association has received considerably over 
a million of dollars, and has in addition, by gift and 
purchase, property valued at nearly 8200,000. The 
Museum is the fortunate possessor of one of the three 
Russian Reproductions, the other two being in the 
South Kensington Museum of London and the Metro- 
politan of New York. Thus, by private enterprise, 
in the true American way, the city is graced and 
honored by art buildings which give it distinction, 
and has a school of art so well equipped and con- 
ducted that it attracts students from far and near, 
tilling its departments of drawing, painting, sculpt- 



Cincinnati and Loxmville. 275 

lire, and wood -carving with eager learners. It has 
over 400 scholars in the various departments. The 
ample endowment fund makes the school really free, 
there being only a nominal charge of about 85 a year. 
In the collection of paintings, which has several of 
merit, is one with a history, which has a unique im- 
portance. This is B. R. Ilaydon's "Public Entry of 
Christ into Jerusalem." This picture of heroic size, 
and in the grand style which had a great vogue in its 
day, was finished in 1820, sold for £170 in 1831, and 
brought to riiiladelphia, where it was exhibited. 
The exhibition did not pay expenses, and the picture 
was placed in the Academy as a companion piece to 
Benjamin AVest's "Death on the Pale Horse." In 
the lire of 1845 both canvases were rescued by being 
cut from the frames and dragged out like old blank- 
ets. It was finally given to the Cathedral in Cincin- 
nati, where its existence was forgotten until it was 
discovered lately and loaned to the Museum. The 
interest in the picture now is mainly an accidental 
one, although it is a fine illustration of the large aca- 
demic method, and in certain details is painted with 
the greatest care. Haydon's studio was the resort of 
English authors of his day, and the portraits of sever- 
al of them are introduced into this picture. The face 
of William Ilazlitt does duty as St. Peter ; Words- 
worth and Sir Isaac Newton and Voltaire appear as 
spectators of the pageant — the cynical expression of 
Voltaire is the worldly contrast to the believing faith 
of the disciples — and the inspired face of the youth- 
ful St. John is that of John Keats. This being the 
only portrait of Keats in life, gives this picture ex- 
traordinary interest. 



276 Southpmd West, 

The spirit of Cincinnati, that is, its concern for in- 
terests not altogether material, is also illustrated by 
its College of Music. This institution was opened in 
1878. It was endowed by private subscription, the 
largest being $100,000 by Mr. R. U. Springer. It is 
financially very prosperous ; its possessions in real es- 
tate, buildings — including a beautiful concert hall — 
and invested endowments amount to over $300,000. 
Its average attendance is about 550, and during the 
year 1887 it had about 650 different scholars. From 
tuition alone about $45,000 were received, and al- 
though the expenditures were liberal, the college had 
at the beginning of 1888 a handsome cash balance. 
The object of the college is the development of 
native talent, and to evoke this the best foreign 
teachers obtainable have been secured. In the de- 
partments of the voice, the piano, and the violin, 
American youth are said to show special proficien- 
cy, and the result of the experiment thus far is to 
strengthen the belief that out of our mixed nationali- 
ty is to come most artistic development in music. 
Free admission is liberally given to pupils who have 
talent but not the means to cultivate it. Recosrnizins: 
the value of broad culture in musical education, the 
managers have provided courses of instruction in 
English literature, lectures upon American authors, 
and for the critical study of Italian. The college 
proper has forty teachers, and as many rooms for in- 
struction. Near it, and connected by a covered way, 
is the great Music Hall, with a seating capacity of 
5400, and the room to pack in nearly 7000 people. In 
this superb hall the great annual musical festivals are 
held. It has a plain interior, sealed entirely in wood. 



Cincinnati and Louisville. 277 

and with almost no ornamentation to impair its reso- 
nance. The courage of the projectors who dared to 
build this hall for a purely musical purpose and not 
for display is already vindicated. It is no doubt the 
best auditorium in the country. As age darkens the 
wood, the interior grows rich, and it is discovered 
that the effect of the seasoning of the wood or of 
the musical vibrations steadily improves the acoustic 
properties, having the same effect upon the sonorous- 
ness of the wood that long use has upon a good vio- 
lin. The whole interior is a magnificent sounding- 
board, if that is the proper expression, and for fifty 
years, if the hall stands, it will constantly improve, 
and have a resonant quality unparalleled in any other 
auditorium. 

The city has a number of clubs, well housed, such 
as are common to other cities, and some that are pe- 
culiar. The Cuvier Club, for the preservation of 
game, has a very large museum of birds, animals, and 
fishes, beautifully prepared and arranged. The His- 
torical and Philosophical Society has also good quar- 
ters, a library of about 10,000 books and 44,000 pam- 
phlets, and is becoming an important depository of 
historical manuscripts. The Literary Society, com- 
posed of 100 members, wdio meet weekly, in commodi- 
ous apartments, to hear an essay, discuss general top- 
ics, and pass an hour socially about small tables, with 
something to eat and drink, has been vigorously 
maintained since 1848. 

An institution of more general importance is the 
Free Public Library, which has about 150,000 books 
and 18,000 pamphlets. This is supported in part by 
an accumulated fund, but mainly by a city tax, which 



278 South and West. 

is appropriated through the Board of Education. 
The expenditures for it in 1887 were about $50,000. 
It has a notably fine art department. The Library is 
excellently managed by Mr. A. W. Whelpley, the li- 
brarian, who has increased its circulation and use- 
fulness by recognizing the new idea that a librarian 
is not a mere custodian of books, but should be a 
stimulator and director of the reading of a commu- 
nity. This office becomes more and more important 
now that the good library has to compete for the at- 
tention of the young with the "cheap and nasty" 
publications of the day. It is probably due some- 
what to direction in reading that books of fiction 
taken from the Library last year were only fifty-one 
per cent, of the whole. 

An institution established in many cities as a help- 
ing hand to w^omen is the Women's Exchange. The 
Exchange in Cincinnati is popular as a restaurant. 
Many worthy women support themselves by prepar- 
ing food which is sold here over the counter, or 
served at the tables. The city has for many years 
sustained a very good Zoological Garden, which is 
much frequented except in the winter. Interest in it 
is not, however, as lively as it was formerly. It 
seems very difficult to keep a " zoo " up to the mark 
in America. 

I do not know that the public schools of Cincinnati 
call for special mention. They seem to be conserva- 
tive schools, not differing from the best elsewhere, 
and they appear to be trying no new experiments. 
One of the high-schools which I saw with 600 pupils 
is well conducted, and gives good preparation for col- 
lege. The city enumeration is over 87,000 children 



Cincinnati and Louisville. 279 

between the ages of six and twenty-one, and of these 
about 36,000 are reported not in school. Of the 2300 
colored children in the city, about half were in school. 
When the Ohio Legislature repealed the law estab- 
lishing separate schools for colored people, practically 
creating mixed schools, a majority of the colored par- 
ents in the city petitioned and obtained branch schools 
of their own, with colored teachers in charge. The 
colored people everywhere seem to prefer to be served 
by teachers and preachers of their own race. 

The schools of Cincinnati have not adopted manual 
training, but a Technical School has been in existence 
about a year, with promise of success. The Cincin- 
nati University under the presidency of Governor Cox 
shows new vitality. It is supported in part by taxa- 
tion, and is open free to all resident youth, so that 
while it is not a part of the public-school system, it 
supplements it. 

Cincinnati has had a great many discouragements 
of late, turbulent politics and dishonorable financial 
failures. But, for all that, it impresses one as a solid 
city, w^ith remarkable development in the higher civil- 
ization. 

In its physical aspect Louisville is in every respect 
a contrast to Cincinnati. Lying on a plain, sloping 
gently up from the river, it spreads widely in rec- 
tangular uniformity of streets — a city of broad avenues, 
getting to be well paved and well shaded, with ample 
spaces in lawns, houses detached, somewhat uniform 
in style, but with an air of comfort, occasionally of 
elegance and solid good taste. The city has an ex- 
ceedingly open, friendly, cheerful appearance. In May, 



280 South and West. 

with its abundant foliage and flowery lawns, it is a 
beautiful city : a beautiful, healthful city in a tem- 
perate climate, surrounded by a fertile country, is 
Louisville. Beyond the city the land rises into a 
rolling country of Blue-Grass farms, and eastward 
along the river are fine bluffs broken into most ad- 
vantageous sites for suburban residences. Looking 
northward across the Ohio are seen the Indiana 
"Knobs." In high-water the river is a majestic 
stream, covering almost entirely the rocks which form 
the "Falls," and the beds of "cement" which are so 
profitably worked. The canal, which makes naviga- 
tion round the rapids, has its mouth at Shipping-port 
Island. About this spot clusters much of the early 
romance of Louisville. Here are some of the old 
houses and the old mill built by the Frenchman Ta- 
rascon in the early part of the century. Here in a 
weather-beaten wooden tenement, still standing, Taras- 
con offered border hospitality to many distinguished 
guests ; Aaron Burr and Blennerhasset were among 
his visitors, and General Wilkinson, the projector of 
the canal, then in command of the armies of the 
United States ; and it was probably here that the fa- 
mous " Spanish conspiracy " was concocted. Corn Isl- 
and, below the rapids, upon which the first settlement 
of Louisville was made in 1778, disappeared some 
years ago, gradually washed away by the swift river. 
Opposite this point, in Indiana, is the village of 
Clarksville, which has a unique history. About 1785 
Virginia granted to Gen. George Rogers Clark, the 
most considerable historic figure of this region, a 
large tract of land in recognition of his services in the 
war. When Virginia ceded this territory to Indiana 



Cincinnati and Louisville. 281 

the townsbij) of Clarksville was excepted from, the 
grant. It had been organized with a governing board 
of trustees, self -perpetuating, and this organization 
still continues. Clarksville has therefore never been 
ceded to the United States, and if it is not an inde- 
pendent communitj% the eminent domain must still 
rest in the State of Virginia. 

Some philosophers say that the character of a peo- 
ple is determined by climate* and soil. There is a no- 
tion in this region that the underlying limestone and 
the consequent succulent Blue-Grass produce a race of 
large men, frank in manner, brave in war, inclined to 
oratory and ornamental conversation, women of un- 
common beauty, and the finest horses in the Union. 
Of course a fertile soil and good living conduce to 
beauty of form and in a way to the free graces of life. 
But the contrast of Cincinnati and Louisville in social 
life and in the manner of doing business cannot all be 
accounted for by Blue-Grass. It would be very in- 
teresting, if one had the knowledge, to study the 
causes of this contrast in two cities not very far apart. 
In late years Louisville has awakened to a new com- 
mercial life, as one finds in it a strong infusion of 
Western business energy and ambition. It is jubilant 
in its growth and prosperity. It was always a com- 
mercial town, but with a dash of Blue-Grass leisure 
and hospitality, and a hereditary flavor of manners 
and fine living. Family and pedigree have always 
been held in as high esteem as beauty. The Ken- 
tuckian of society is a great contrast to the Virginian, 
but it may be only the development of the tide-water 
gentleman in the freer, wider opportunities of the 
Blue-Grass region. The pioneers of Kentucky were 



282 South and West 

backwoodsmen, but many of the early settlers, whose 
descendants are now leaders in society and in the pro- 
fessions, came w^ith the full-blown tastes and habits of 
Virginia civilization, as their spacious colonial houses, 
erected in the latter part of the last century and the 
early part of this, still attest. They brought and 
planted in the wilderness a highly developed social 
state, which was modified into a certain freedom by 
circumstances. One can fancy in the abundance of a 
temperate latitude a certain gayety and joyousness in 
material existence, which is contented with that, and 
has not sought the art and musical development which 
one finds in Cincinnati. All over the South, Louis- 
ville is noted for the beauty of its women, but the oth- 
er ladies of the South say that they can always tell 
one from Louisville by her dress, something in it quite 
aware of the advanced fashion, something in the "cut" 
— a mystery known only to the feminine eye. 

I did not intend, however, to enter upon a disquisition 
of the different types of civilization in Cincinnati and 
in Louisville. One observes them as evidences of what 
has heretofore been mentioned, the great variety in 
American life, when one looks below the surface. 
The traveller enjoys both types, and is rejoiced to 
find such variety, culture, taking in one city the form 
of the w^orship of beauty and the enjoyment of life, 
and in the other greater tendency to the fine arts. 
Louisville is a city of churches, of very considerable 
religious activity, and of pretty stanch orthodoxy. I 
do not mean to say that what are called modern ideas 
do not leaven its society. In one of its best literary 
clubs I heard the Spencerian philosophy expounded 
and advocated with the enthusiasm and keenness of 



Cincinnati and Louisville. 283 

an emancipated Eastern town. But it is as true of 
Louisville as it is of other Southern cities that tradi- 
tional faith is less disturbed by doubts and isms than 
in many Eastern towns. One notes here also, as all 
over the South, the marked growth of the temperance 
movement. The Kentuckians believe that they pro- 
duce the best fluid from rye and corn in the Union, 
and that they are the best judges of it. Neither prop- 
osition will be disputed, nor will one trifle with a le- 
gitimate pride in a home production ; but there is a 
new spirit abroad, and both Bourbon and the game 
that depends quite as much upon the knowledge of 
human nature as upon the turn of the cards are silent- 
ly going to the rear. Always Kentuckians have been 
distinguished in politics, in oratory, in the professions 
of law and of medicine ; nor has the city ever wanted 
scholars in historical lore, men who have not only kept 
alive the traditions of learning and local research, like 
Col. John Mason Brown, but have exhibited the true 
antiquarian spirit of Col. H. T. Durrett, whose histori- 
cal library is worth going far to see and study. It 
will be a great pity if his exceedingly valuable collec- 
tion is not preserved to the State to become the nu- 
cleus of a Historical Society w^orthy of the State's his- 
tory. When I spoke of art it was in a public sense ; 
there are many individuals who have good pictures 
and especially interesting portraits, and in the early 
days Kentucky produced at least one artist, wholly 
self-taught, who was a rare genius. Matthew H. 
Jouett was born in Mercer County in 1780, and died 
in Louisville in 1820. In the course of his life he 
painted as many as three hundred and fifty portraits, 
AVhich are scattered all over the Union. In his ma- 



284: South and West. 

ture years he was for a time with Stuart in Boston. 
Some specimens of his work in Louisville are wonder- 
fully fine, recalling the style and traditions of the best 
masters, some of them equal if not superior to the 
best by Stuart, and suggesting in color and solidity 
the vigor and grace of Vandyck. He was the product 
of no school but nature and his own genius. Louis- 
ville has alwaj's had a scholarly and aggressive press, 
and its traditions are not weakened in Mr. Henry Wat- 
terson. On the social side the good-fellowship of the 
city is well represented in the Pendennis Club, which 
is thoroughly home-like and agreeable. The town has 
at least one book-store of the first class, but it sells 
very few American copyright books. The city has no 
free or considerable public library. The Polytechnic 
Society, which has a room for lectures, keeps for cir- 
culation among subscribers about 38,000 books. It 
has also a geological and mineral collection, and a 
room devoted to pictures, which contains an allegori- 
cal statue by Canova. 

In its public schools and institutions of charity the 
city has a great deal to show that is interesting. In 
medicine it has always been famous. It has four 
medical colleges, a college of dentistry, a college of 
pharmacy, and a school of pharmacy for women. In 
nothing, however, is the spirit of the town better ex- 
hibited than in its public-school system. With a popu- 
lation of less than 180,000, the school enrolment, which 
has advanced year by year, was in 1887 21,601, with 
an aggregate belonging of 17,392. The amount ex. 
pended on schools, which was in 1880 $197,699, had 
increased to $323,943 in 1887— a cost of $18.62 per 
pupil. Equal provision is made for colored schools as 



Cincinnati and Louisville. 285 

for white, but the number of colored pupils is less than 
3000, and the colored high-school is small, as only a 
few are yet fitted to go so far in education. The ne- 
groes all prefer colored teachers, and so far as I could 
learn, they are quite content with the present manage- 
ment of the School Board. Co-education is not in the 
Kentucky idea, nor in its social scheme. There are 
therefore two high-schools — one for girls and one for 
boys — both of the highest class and efficiency, in ex- 
cellent buildings, and under most intelligent manage- 
ment. Among the teachers in the schools are ladies 
of position, and the schools doubtless owe their good 
character largely to the fact that they are in the fash- 
ion: as a rule, all the children of the city are educated 
in them. Manual training is not introduced, but all 
the advanced methods in the best modern schools, ob- 
ject-lessons, word-building, moulding, and drawing, are 
practised. During the fall and winter months there 
are night schools, which are very well attended. In 
one of the intermediate schools I saw an exercise which 
illustrates the intelligent spirit of the schools. This 
was an account of the early settlement, growth, and 
prosperity of Louisville, told in a series of very short 
papers — so many that a large number of the pupils 
had a share in constructing the history. Each one 
took up connectively a brief period or the chief events 
in chronological order, with illustrations of manners 
and customs, fashions of dress and mode of life. Of 
course this mosaic was not original, but made up of 
extracts from various local histories and statistical re- 
ports. This had the merit of being a good exercise as 
well as inculcating an intelligent pride in the city. 
Nearly every religious denomination is represented 



286 South and West 

in the 142 churches of Louisville. Of these 9 are 
Northern Presbyterian and 7 Southern Presbyterian, 
11 of the M.E. Church South and 6 of the M.E. Church 
Nortb, 18 Catholic, 7 Christian, 1 Unitarian, and 31 
colored. There are seven convents and monasteries, 
and a Young Men's Christian Association. In propor- 
tion to its population, the city is pre-eminent for public 
and private charities : there are no less than thirty- 
eight of these institutions, providing for the infirm 
and unfortunate of all ages and conditions. Unique 
among these in the United States is a \qyj fine build- 
ing for the maintenance of the widows and orphans 
of deceased Freemasons of the State of Kentucky, 
supported mainly by contributions of the Masonic 
lodges. One of the best equipped and managed in- 
dustrial schools of reform for boys and girls is on the 
outskirts of the city. Mr. P. Caldwell is its superin- 
tendent, and it OAves its success, as all similar schools 
do, to the peculiar fitness of the manager for this sort 
of work. The institution has three departments. 
There were 125 white boys and 79 colored boys, oc- 
cupying separate buildings in the same enclosure, and 
41 white girls in their own house in another enclosure. 
The establishment has a farm, a garden, a greenhouse, 
a library building, a little chapel, ample and pleasant 
play-yards. There is as little as possible the air of a 
prison about the place, and as much as possible that 
of a home and school. The boys have organized a 
very fair brass band. The girls make all the clothes 
for the establishment; the boys make shoes, and last 
year earned $8000 in bottoming chairs. The school 
is mainly sustained by taxation and city appropria- 
tions; the yearly cost is about $26,000. Children are 



Cincinnati and Louisville. 287 

indentured out when good homes can be found for 
tliem. 

The School for the Education of the Blind is a 
State institution, and admits none from outside the 
State. The fine building occupies a commanding 
situation on hills not far from the river, and is admi- 
rably built, the rooms spacious and airy, and the whole 
establishment is well ordered. There are only '79 
scholars, and the few colored are accommodated by 
themselves in a separate building, in accordance with 
an Act of the Legislature in 1884 for the education of 
colored blind children. The distinction of this institu- 
tion is that it has on its premises the United States 
printing-office for furnishing publications for the blind 
asylums of the country. Printing is done here both 
in letters and in points, by very ingenious processes, 
and the library is already considerable. The space 
required to store a library of books for the blind may 
be reckoned from the statement that the novel of " Ivan- 
hoe" occupies three volumes, each larger than Webster's 
Unabridged Dictionary. The weekly Sunday-school 
Times is printed here. The point writing consists 
entirely of dots in certain combinations to represent 
letters, and it is noticed that about half the children 
prefer this to the alphabet. The preference is not ex- 
plained by saying that it is merely a matter of feeling. 

The city has as yet no public parks, but the very 
broad streets — from sixty to one hundred and twenty 
feet in width — the wide spacing of the houses in the resi- 
dence parts, and the abundant shade make them less a 
necessity than elsewhere. The city spreads very free- 
ly and openly over the plain, and short drives take 
one into lovely Blue-Grass country. A few miles out 



2SS South and ^Ve$t. 

on Churchill Downs is the famous Jockey Club Park, 
a perfect racing track and establishment, where world- 
wide reputations are made at the semi-annual meet- 
ings. The limestone region, a beautifully rolling coun- 
try, almost rivals the Lexington plantations in the 
raising of tine horses. Driving out to one of these 
farms one day, we passed, not far from the river, the 
old Taylor mansion and the tomb of Zachary Taylor. 
It is in the reserved family burying-ground, where lie 
also the remains of Richard Taylor, of Revolutionary 
memory. The great tomb and the graves are overrun 
thickly with myrtle, and the secluded irregular ground 
is shaded by forest-trees. The soft wind of spring 
was blowing sweetly over the fresh green fields, and 
there was about the place an air of repose and dignity 
most refreshing to the spirit. Near the tomb stands 
the fine commemorative shaft bearing on its summit 
a good portrait statue of the hero of Buena Vista. I 
liked to linger there, the country was so sweet; the 
great river flowing in sight lent a certain grandeur to 
the resting-place, and I thought how dignified and fit 
it was for a President to be buried at his home. 

The city of Louisville in ISSS has the unmistakable 
air of confidence and buoyant prosperity. This feel- 
ing of confidence is strengthened by the general awak- 
ening of Kentucky in increased immigration of agri- 
culturists, and in the development of extraordinary 
mines of coal and iron, and in the railway extension. 
But locally the Board of Trade (an active body of TOO 
members) has in its latest report most encouraging 
figures to present. In almost every branch of busi- 
ness there was an increase in 1SS7 over 1SS6; in both 
manufactures and trade the volume of business in- 



Cincinnati and Louisville. 2S9 

creased from twenty to fifty per cent. For instance, 
stoves and castings increased from 16,574,547 pounds 
to 19,386,808; manufactured tobacco, from 12,729,421 
pounds to 17,059,006; gas and water pipes, from bOi,- 
083,380 pounds to 63,745,216; grass and clover seed, 
from 4,240,908 bushels to 6,601,451. A conclusive 
item as to manufactures is that there were received in 
1887 951,767 tons of bituminous coal, against 204,221 
tons in 1886. Louisville makes the claim of being the 
largest tobacco market in the world in bulk and va- 
riety. It leads largely the nine principal leaf-tobacco 
markets in the West. The figures for 1887 are — re- 
ceipts, 123,569 hogsheads; sales, 135,192 hogsheads; 
stock in hand, 36,431 hogsheads, against the corre- 
sponding figures of 62,074, 65,924, 13,972 of its great 
rival, Cincinnati. These large figures are a great in- 
crease over 1886, when the value of tobacco handled 
here was estimated at nearly $20,000,000. Another 
great interest always associated with Louisville, whis- 
key, shows a like increase, there being shipped in 1887 
119,637 barrels, against 101,943 barrels in 1886. In 
the Louisville collection district there were registered 
one hundred grain distilleries, with a capacity of 80,000 
gallons a day. For the five years ending June 30, 
1887, the revenue taxes on this product amounted to 
nearly 830,000,000. I am not attempting a conspectus 
of the business of Louisville, only selecting some fig- 
ures illustratins' its orpowth. Its manufacture of asrri- 

CD O O 

cultural implements has attained great proportions. 
The reputation of Louisville for tobacco and whiskey 
is widely advertised, but it is not generally known 
that it has the largest plough factory in the world. 
This is one of four which altogether employ about 
19 



290 South and West 

2000 hands, and make a product valued at |2,2V5,000. 
In 1880 Louisville made 80,000 ploughs; in 1886, 
190,000. The capacity of manufacture in 1887 was 
increased by the enlargement of the chief factory to a 
number not given, but there were shipped that year 
11,005,151 pounds of ploughs. There is a steadilj^ 
increasing manufacture of woollen goods, and the pro- 
duction of the mixed fabric known as Kentucky jeans 
is another industry in which Louisville leads the 
world, making annually 7,500,000 yards of cloth, and 
its four mills increased their capacity twenty per 
cent, in 1887. The opening of the hard-wood lumber 
districts in eastern Kentucky has made Louisville one 
of the important lumber markets: about 125,000,000 
feet of lumber, logs, etc., were sold here in 1887. But 
it is unnecessary to particularize. The Board of Trade 
think that the advantages of Louisville as a manu- 
facturing centre are sufficiently emphasized from the 
fact that during the year 1887 seventy - three new 
manufacturing establishments, mainly from the North 
and East, were set up, using a capital of $1,290,500, 
and employing 1621 laborers. The city has twenty- 
two banks, which had, July 1, 1887, $8,200,200 capi- 
tal, and $19,927,138 deposits. The clearings for 1887 
were $281,110,402 — an increase of nearly $50,000,000 
over 1886. 

Another item which helps to explain the buoyant 
feeling of Louisville is that its population increased 
over 10,000 from 1886 to 1887, reaching, according to 
the best estimate, 177,000 people. I should have said 
also that no city in the Union is better served by 
street railways, which are so multiplied and arranged 
as to " correspondences " that for one fare nearly ev- 



Cincinnati and Louisville. 291 

ery inhabitant can ride within at least two blocks of 
his residence. In these cars, as in the railway cars of 
the State, there is the same absence of discrimination 
against color that prevails in Louisiana and in Arkan- 
sas. And it is an observation hopeful, at least to the 
writer, of the good time at hand when all party lines 
shall be drawn upon the broadest national issues, that 
there seems to be in Kentucky no social distinction 
between Democrats and Republicans. 



XIII. 
MEMPHIS AND LITTLE ROCK. 

The State of Tennessee gets its diversity of climate 
and productions from the irregtilarity of its surface, 
not from its range over degrees of latitude, like Illi- 
nois; for it is a narrow State, with an average breadth 
of only a hundred and ten miles, while it is about four 
hundred miles in length, from the mountains in the 
cast — the highest land east of the Rocky Mountains 
— to the alluvial bottom of the Mississippi in the 
west. In this range is every variety of mineral and 
agricultural wealth, with some of the noblest scenery 
and the fairest farming-land in the Union, and all the 
good varieties of a temperate climate. 

In the extreme south-west corner lies Memphis, dif- 
fering as entirely in character from Knoxville and 
Nashville as the bottom-lands of the Mississippi dif- 
fer from the valleys of the Great Smoky Mountains. 
It is the natural centre of the finest cotton-producing 
district in the world, the county of Shelby, of which it 
is legally known as the Taxing District, yielding more 
cotton than any other county in the Union except that 
of Washington in Mississippi. It is almost as much 
aloof politically from east and middle Tennessee as 
it is geographically. A homogeneous State might be 
constructed by taking west Tennessee, all of Missis- 
sippi above Yicksburg and Jackson, and a slice off 
Arkansas, with Memphis for its capital. But the re- 



Memjphis and Little Rock. 293 

districting would be a good thing neither for the 
States named nor for Memphis, for the more variety 
within convenient limits a State can have, the better, 
and Memphis could not wish a better or more dis- 
tinguished destiny than to become the commercial 
metropolis of a State of such great possibilities and 
varied industries as Tennessee. Her political influence 
might be more decisive in the homogeneous State out- 
lined, but it will be abundant for all reasonable am- 
bition in its inevitable commercial importance. And 
besides, the western part of the State needs the mor- 
al tonic of the more elevated regions. 

The city has a frontage of about four miles on the 
Mississippi River, but is high above it on the Chicka- 
saw Bluffs, with an uneven surface and a rolling coun- 
try back of it, the whole capable of perfect drainage. 
Its site is the best on the river for a great city from 
St. Louis to the Gulf; this advantage is emphasized 
by the concentration of railways at this point, and the 
great bridge, which is now on the eve of construction, 
to the Arkansas shore, no doubt fixes its destiny as the 
inland metropolis" of the South-west. Memphis was the 
child of the Mississippi, and this powerful, wayward 
stream is still its fostering mother, notwithstanding 
the decay of river commerce brought about by the rail- 
ways; for the river still asserts its power as a regula- 
tor of rates of transportation. I do not mean to say 
that the freighting on it in towed barges is not still 
enormous, but if it did not carry a pound to the mar- 
kets of the world it is still the friend of all the inner 
continental regions, which says to the railroads, be- 
yond a certain rate of charges you shall not go. With 
this advantage of situation, the natural receiver of the 



294 South and 'West. 

products of an inexhaustible agricultural region (one 
has only to take a trip by rail through the Yazoo Val- 
ley to be convinced of that), and an equally good point 
for distribution of supplies, it is inevitable that Mem- 
phis should grow with an accelerating impulse. 

The city has had a singular and instructive history, 
and that she has survived so many vicissitudes and 
calamities, and entered upon an extraordinary career 
of prosperity, is sufficient evidence of the territorial 
necessity of a large city just at this point on the riv- 
er. The student of social science will find in its his- 
tory a striking illustration of the relation of sound 
sanitary and business conditions to order and moral- 
ity. Before the war, and for some time after it, Mem- 
phis was a place for trade in one staple, where fortunes 
were quickly made and lost, where no attention was 
paid to sanitary laws. The cloud of impending pes- 
tilence always hung over it, the yellow-fever was al- 
ways a possibility, and a devastating epidemic of it 
must inevitably be reckoned with every few years. 
It seems to be a law of social life that an epidemic, 
or the probability of it, engenders a recklessness of 
life and a low condition of morals and public order. 
Memphis existed, so to speak, on the edge of a vol- 
cano, and it cannot be denied that it had a reputation 
for violence and disorder. While little or nothing was 
done to make the city clean and habitable, or to beau- 
tify it, law was weak in its mobile, excitable popula- 
tion, and differences of opinion were settled by the 
revolver. In spite of these disadvantages, the profits 
of trade were so great there that its population of 
twenty thousand at the close of the war had doubled 
by 1878. In that year the yellow-fever came as an 



MemjpMs and Little Bock, 295 

ej^idemic, and so increased in 1879 as nearly to depop- 
ulate the city; its population was reduced from nearly 
forty thousand to about fourteen thousand, two-thirds 
of which were negroes; its commerce was absolutely 
cut off, its manufactures were suspended, it was bank- 
rupt. There is nothing more unfortunate for a State 
or a city than loss of financial credit. Memphis strug- 
gled in vain with its enormous debt, unable to pay it, 
unable to compromise it. 

Under these circumstances the city resorted to a 
novel expedient. It surrendered its charter to the 
State, and ceased to exist as a municipality. The 
leaders of this movement gave two reasons for it, 
the wish not to repudiate the city debt, but to gain 
breathing-time, and that municipal government in this 
country is a failure. The Legislature erected the 
former Memphis into The Taxing District of Shelby 
County, and provided a government for it. This 
government consists of a Legislative Council of eight 
members, made up of the Board of Fire and Police 
Commissioners, consisting of three, and the Board of 
Public Works, consisting of five. These are all elected 
by popular vote to serve a term of four years, but the 
elections are held every two years, so that the council 
always contains members who have had experience. 
The Board of Fire and Police Commissioners elects a 
President, who is the executive officer of the Taxing 
District, and has the power and duties of a mayor; he 
has a salary of $2000, inclusive of his fees as police 
magistrate, and the other members of his board have 
salaries of $500. The members of the Board of Pub- 
lic Works serve without compensation. INo man can 
be eligible to either board who has not been a resi- 



e06 South and West. 

dout of the district for tivo years. In addition there 
is a lioard of Health, appointed by the couneiL This 
government has the ordinary powers of a city govern- 
ment, detined earefnlly in the Aet, but it cannot run 
the city in debt, and it cannot appropriate the taxes 
collected except for the specitic purpose named by 
the State Legislature, which specific appropriations 
arc voted annually by the Legislature on the recom- 
mendation of the council. Thus the government of 
the city is committed to eight men, and the execution 
of its laws to one man, the President of the Taxing 
District, who has extraordinary power. The final suc- 
cess of this scheme will be watched with a great deal 
of interest by other cities. On the surface it can be 
seen that it depends upon securing a non-partisan coun- 
cil, and an honest, conscientious President of the Tax- 
ing District — that is to say, upon the choice by popu- 
lar vote of the best eight men to rule the city. Up to 
this time, with only slight hitches, it has worked ex- 
ceedingly well, as will appear in a consideration of the 
condition of the city. The slight hitch mentioned was 
that the President was accused of using temporarily 
the sum appropriated for one city purpose for an- 
other. 

The Supreme Court of the United States decided 
that Memphis had not evaded its obligations by a 
change of name and form of government. The re- 
sult was a settlement with the creditors at fifty cents 
on the dollar; and then the city gathered itself togeth- 
er for a courageous effort and a new era of prosperity. 
The turning-point in its career was the adoption of a 
system of drainage and sewerage which transformed 
it immediatelv into a fairlv healthful citv. AVith its 



Memphis and Little EocK 297 

uneven surface and abundance of water at hand, it was 
well adapted to the Waring system, which works to 
the satisfaction of all concerned, and since its intro- 
duction the inhabitants are relieved from apprehension 
of the return of a yellow-fever epidemic. Population 
and business returned with this sense of security, and 
there has been a change in the social atmosphere as 
well. In 1880 it had a population of less than 34,000; 
it can now truthfully claim between 75,000 and 80,000; 
and the business activity, the building both of fine busi- 
ness blocks and handsome private residences, are pro- 
portioned to the increase in inhabitants. In 1879-80 
the receipt of cotton was 409,809 bales, valued at $23,- 
752,529; in 1886-87,663,277 bales, valued at $30,099,- 
510. The estimate of the Board of Trade for 1888, 
judging from the first months of the year, is 700,000 
bales. I notice in the comparative statement of lead- 
ing articles of commerce and consumption an exceed- 
ingly large increase in 1887 over 1880. The banking 
capital in 1887 was $3,360,000 — an increase of $1,560,- 
000 over 1886. The clearings were $101,177,377 in 
1877, against $82,642,192 in 1886. 

The traveller, however, docs not need figures to con- 
vince him of the business activity of the town ; the 
piles of cotton beyond the capacity of storage, the 
street traffic, the extension of streets and residences 
far beyond the city limits, all speak of growth. There 
is in process of construction a union station to accom- 
modate the six railways now meeting there and others 
projected. On the west of the river it has lines to 
Kansas City and Little Rock and to St. Louis; on the 
east, to Louisville and to the Atlantic seaboard direct, 
and two to New Orleans. With the building of the 



298 South and West. 

bridge, which is expected to be constructed in a couple 
of years, Memphis will be admirably supplied with 
transportation facilities. 

As to its external appearance, it must be said that 
the city has grown so fast that city improvements do 
not keep pace with its assessable value. The inability 
of the city to go into debt is a wholesome provision, 
but under this limitation the city offices are shabby, 
the city police quarters and court would disgrace an 
indigent country village, and most of the streets are 
in bad condition for want of pavement. There are 
fine streets, many attractive new residences, and some 
fine old places, with great trees, and the gravelled 
pikes running into the country are in fine condition, 
and are favorite drives. There is a beautiful country 
round about, with some hills and pleasant woods. 
Looked at from an elevation, the town is seen to cover 
a large territory, and presents in the early green of 
spring a charming appearance. Some five miles out 
is the Montgomery race-track, park, and club-house — 
a handsome establishment, prettily laid out and plant- 
ed, already attractive, and sure to be notable when 
the trees are grown. 

The city has a public - school system, a Board of 
Education elected by popular vote, and divides its 
fund fairly between schools for white and colored 
children. But it needs good school-houses as much 
as it needs good pavements. In 1887 the tax of one 
and a half mills produced $54,000 for carrying on the 
schools, and 819,000 for the building fund. It was 
not enough — at least $75,000 were needed. The 
schools were in debt. There is a plan adopted for a 
fine High -school building, but the city needs alto- 



Memphis and Little Bock. 299 

getlier more money and more energy for the public 
schools. According to some reports the public schools 
have suffered from politics, and are not as good as they 
were years ago, but they are undoubtedly gaining in 
public favor, notwithstanding some remaining Bourbon 
prejudice against them. The citizens are making mon- 
ey fast enough to begin to be liberal in matters educa- 
tional, which are only second to sanitary measures in 
the well-being of the city. The new free Public 
Library, which will be built and opened in a couple 
of years, will do much for the city in this direction. 
It is the noble gift of the late F. H. Cossitt, of New 
York, formerly a citizen of Memphis, who left 175,000 
for that purpose. 

Perhaps the public schools of Memphis would be 
better (though not so without liberal endowment) if 
the city had not two exceptionally good private schools 
for young ladies. These are the Clara Conway Insti- 
tute and the Higby School for Young Ladies, taking 
their names from their principals and founders. Each 
of these schools has about 350 pupils, from the age of 
six to the mature age of graduation, boys being ad- 
mitted until they are twelve years old. Each has 
pleasant grounds and fine buildings, large, airy, well 
planned, with ample room for all the departments — 
literature, science, art, music — of the most advanced 
education. One finds in them the best methods of 
the best schools, and a most admirable spirit. It is 
not too much to say that these schools give distinction 
to Memphis, and that the discipline and intellectual 
training the young ladies receive there will have a 
marked effect upon the social life of the city. If one 
who spent some delightful hours in the company of 



300 Soioth and ^Yest. 

these graceful and enthusiastic scholars, and who 
would like heartily to acknowledge their cordiality, 
and his appreciation of their admirable progress in 
general study, might make a suggestion, it would be 
that what the frank, impulsive Southern girl, with her 
inborn talent for being agreeable and her vivid ap- 
prehension of life, needs least of all is the culti- 
vation of the emotional, the rhetorical, the senti- 
mental side. However cleverly they are done, the 
recitation of poems of sentiment, of j)assion, of love- 
making and marriage, above all, of those doubtful 
dialect verses in which a touch of pseudo-feeling is 
supposed to excuse the slang of the street and the 
vulgarity of the farm, is not an exercise elevating to 
the taste. I happen to speak of it here, but I confess 
that it is only a text from which a little sermon might 
be preached about "recitations" and declamations 
generally, in these days of overdone dialect and innu- 
endoes about the hypocrisy of old-fashioned morality. 

The city has a prosperous college of the Christian 
Brothers, another excellent school for girls in the St. 
Agnes Academy, and a colored industrial school, the 
Lemoyne, where the girls are taught cooking and the 
art of house-keeping, and the boys learn carpentering. 
This does not belong to the public-school system. 

Whatever may be the opinion about the propriety 
of attaching industrial training to public schools gen- 
erally, there is no doubt that this sort of training is in- 
dispensable to the colored people of the South, whose 
children do not at present receive the needed domestic 
training at home, and whose education must contribute 
to their ability to earn a living. Those educated in 
the schools, high and low, cannot all be teachers or 



Memphis and Little Rock. 301 

preachers^ and they are not in the way of either social 
elevation or thrifty lives if they have neither a trade 
nor the taste to make neat and agreeable homes. The 
colored race cannot have it too often impressed upon 
them that their way to all the rights and privileges 
under a free government lies in industry, thrift, and 
moralit}^ Whatever reason they have to complain of 
remaining discrimination and prejudice, there is only 
one way to overcome both, and that is by the acquisi- 
tion of property and intelligence. In the history of 
the world a people were never elevated otherwise. 
No amount of legislation can do it. In Memphis — in 
Southern cities generally — the public schools are im- 
partially administered as to the use of money for both 
races. In the country districts they are as generally 
inadequate, both in quality and in the length of the 
school year. In the country, where farming and do- 
mestic service must be the occupations of the mass of 
the people, industrial schools .are certainly not called 
for; but in the cities they are a necessity of the pres- 
ent development. 

Ever since Memphis took itself in hand with a new 
kind of municipal government, and made itself a health- 
ful city, good-fortune of one kind and another seems 
to have attended it. Abundant water it could get 
from the river for sewerage purposes, but for other 
uses either extensive filters were needed or cisterns 
were resorted to. The city was supplied with water, 
which the stranger would hesitate to drink or bathe 
in, from Wolf River, a small stream emptying into 
the Mississippi above the city. But within the year 
a most important discovery has been made for the 
health and prosperity of the town. This was the 



302 South and West. 

striking, in the depression of the Gayoso Bayou, at a 
depth of 450 feet, perfectly pure water, at a tempera- 
ture of about 62°, in abundance, with a head sufficient 
to bring it in fountains some feet about the level of 
the ground. Ten wells had been sunk, and the Avater 
flowing was estimated at ten millions of gallons daily, 
or half enough to supply the city. It was expected 
that with more wells the supply would be sufficient 
for all purposes, and then Memphis will have drinking 
water not excelled in purity by that of any city in the 
land. It is not to be wondered at that this incalcu- 
lable good-fortune should add buoyancy to tlie busi- 
ness, and even to the advance in the price, of real 
estate. The city has widely outgrown its corporate 
limits, there is activity in building and improvements 
in all the pleasant suburbs, and with the new pave- 
ments which are in progress, the city will be as attract- 
ive as it is prosperous. 

Climate is much a matter of taste. The whole area 
of the alluvial land of the Mississippi has the three 
requisites for malaria — heat, moisture, and vegetable 
decomposition. The tendency to this is overcome, in 
a measure, as the land is thoroughly drained and culti- 
vated. Memphis has a mild winter, long summer, and 
a considerable portion of the year when the tempera- 
ture is just about right for enjoyment. In the table 
of temperature for 1887 I find that the mean was 61.9°, 
the mean of the highest by months was 84.9°, and the 
mean lowest was 37.4°. The coldest month was Janu- 
ary, when the range of the thermometer was from 
72.2° to 4.3°, and the hottest was July, when the range 
was from 99° to 67.3°. There is a preponderance of 
fair, sunny weather. The record for 18S7 was: 157 



Mem^pJiis and Little Bock. 303 

days of clear, 132 fair, 65 cloudy, 91 days of frost. 
From this it appears that Memphis has a pretty agree- 
able climate for those who do not iusist upon a good 
deal of " bracing," and it has a most genial and hospi- 
table society. 

Early on the morning of the 12th of April we 
crossed the river to the lower landing of the Mem- 
phis and Little Rock Railway, the upper landing be- 
ing inaccessible on account of the high water. It 
was a delicious spring morning, the foliage, half un- 
folded, was in its first flush of green, and as we steam- 
ed down the stream the town, on bluffs forty feet high, 
was seen to have a noble situation. All the opposite 
countr}^ for forty miles from the river was afloat, 
and presented the appearance of a vast swamp, not 
altogether unpleasing in its fresh dress of green. 
For forty miles, to Madison, the road ran upon an 
embankment just above the flood ; at intervals were 
poor shanties and little cultivated patches, but shan- 
ties, corn patches, and trees all stood in the water. 
The inhabitants, the majority colored, seemed of the 
sort to be content with half-amphibious lives. Be- 
fore we reached Madison and crossed St. Francis 
River we ran through a streak of gravel. Forest 
City, at the crossing of the Iron Mountain Railway, 
turned out to be not exactly a city, in the Eastern 
meaning of the word, but a considerable collection of 
houses, with a large hotel. It seemed, so far in the 
wilderness, an irresponsible sort of place, and the 
crowd at the station were in a festive, hilarious 
mood. This was heightened by the playing of a 
travelling band which we carried with us in the 



30 J: Sout/i and West. 

second - class car, and wbicli good - naturcdly unlim- 
bered at the stations. It consisted of a colored "bass- 
viol, A'iolin, and guitar, and a white cornet. On the 
way the negro population were in the majority, all 
the residences were shabby shanties, and the moving 
public on the trains and about the stations had not 
profited by the example of the commercial travellers, 
who are the only smartly dressed people one sees in 
these regions. A young girl who got into the car 
here told me that she came from Marianna, a town to 
the south, on the Languille River, and she seemed to 
regard it as a central place. At Brinkley we crossed 
the St. Louis, Arkansas, and Texas road, ran through 
more swamps to the Cache River, after which there 
was prairie and bottom-land, and at Do Valle's Bluff 
we came to the White River. There is no doubt that 
this country is well vratered. After AVhite River fine 
reaches of prairie-land were encountered — in fact, a 
good deal of prairie and oak timber. Much of this 
prairie had once been cultivated to cotton, but was 
now turned to grazing, and dotted with cattle. A 
place named Prairie Centre had been abandoned ; in- 
deed, we passed a good many abandoned houses before 
we reached Carlisle and the Galloway. Lonoke is one of 
the villages of rather mean appearance, but important 
enough to be talked about and visited by the five 
aspirants for the gubernatorial nomination, who were 
travelling about together, each one trying to con- 
vince the people that the other four were unworthy 
the office. This is lowland Arkansas, supporting a 
few rude villages, inhabited by negroes and unam- 
bitious whites, and not a faii'ly representative portion 
of a great State. 



Mejnjphis and LlttU Back. 305 

At Argenta, a sort of railway and factory suburb 
of tlie city, we crossed the muddy, strong-flowing 
Arkansas River on a fine bridge, elevated so as to 
strike high up on the bluff on which Little Rock is 
built. The rock of the bluff, which the railway 
pierces, is a very shaly slate. The town lying along 
the bluff has a very picturesque appearance, in spite 
of its newness and the poor color of its brick. The 
situation is a noble one, commanding a fine prospect 
of river and plain, and mountains to the west rising 
from the bluff on a series of gentle hills, with con- 
spicuous heights farther out for public institutions 
and country houses. The city, which has nearly 
thirty thousand inhabitants, can boast a number of 
handsome business streets with good shops and an air 
of prosperous trade, with well-shaded residence streets 
of comfortable houses ; but all the thoroughfares are 
bad for want of paving. Little Rock being forbidden 
by the organic law ( as Memphis is ) to run in debt for 
city improvements. A city which has doubled its 
population within eight years, and been restrained 
from using its credit, must expect to suffer from bad 
streets, but its caution about debt is reassuring to in- 
tending settlers. The needed street improvements, it 
is understood, however, will soon be under way, and 
the citizens have the satisfaction of knowing that 
when they are made. Little Rock will be a beautiful 
city. 

Below the second of the iron bridges which span 
the river is a bowlder which gave the name of Little 
Rock to the town. The general impression is that it 
is the first rock on the river above its confluence 
with the Mississippi ; this is not literally true, but 
20 



306 South and Wtst. 

this rock is the first conspicuous one, and has become 
historic. On the opposite side of the river, a mile 
above, is a bhiff several hundred feet high, called Big 
Kock. On the summit is a beautiful park, a vine- 
yard, a summer hotel, and pleasure-grounds — a de- 
lightful resort in the hot weather. From the top one 
gains a fair idea of Arkansas — the rich delta of the 
river, the mighty stream itself, the fertile rolling land 
and forests, the mountains on the border of the Ind- 
ian Territory, the fair city, the sightly prominences 
about it dotted with buildings — altogether a mag- 
nificent and most cliarmhig view. 

There is a United States arsenal at Little Rock ; 
the Government Post-ofiice is a handsome building, 
and among the twenty-seven churches there are some 
of pleasing architecture. The State-house, which 
stands upon the bluff overlooking tlie river, is a relic 
of old times, suggesting the easy-going plantation 
style. It is an indescribable building, or group of 
buildings, with cLassic piUars of course, and rambling 
galleries that lead to old-fashioned, domestic-looking 
State oflices. It is shabby in appearance, but has a 
certain interior air of comfort. The room of the 
Assembly — plain, with windows on three sides, open 
to the sun and air, and not so large that conversation- 
al speaking cannot be heard in it — is not at all the 
modern notion of a legislative chamber, which ought 
to be lofty, magnificently decorated, liglited from 
above, and shut in as much as possible from tlie air 
and the outside world. Arkansas, which is rapidly 
growing in population and wealth, will no doubt 
very soon want a new State-house. Heaven send 
it an architect who will think first of the comfort- 



Meiiiphis and Little Bock. 307 

able, cheerful rooms, and second of imposing out- 
side display ! He might spend a couple of millions 
on a building which would astonish the natives, and 
not give them as agreeable a working room for the 
Legislature as this old chamber. The fashion is to 
put up an edifice whose dimensions shall somehow 
represent the dignity of the State, a vast structure of 
hall -ways and staircases, with half -lighted and ill- 
ventilated rooms. It seems to me that the American 
genius ought to be able to devise a capitol of a differ- 
ent sort, certainly one better adapted to the Southern 
climate. A group of connected buildings for the 
various departments might be better than one solid 
parallelogram, and I have a fancy that legislators 
would be clearer -headed, and would profit more b}' 
discussion, if they sat in a cheerful chamber, not too 
large to be easily heard in, and open as much as pos- 
sible to the sun and air and the sight of tranquil 
nature. The present Capitol has an air of lazy neg- 
lect, and the law library which is stored in it could 
not well be in a worse condition ; but there is some- 
thing rather pleasing about the old, easy-going es- 
tablishment that one would pretty certainly miss in a 
smart new building. Arkansas has an opportunity to 
distinguish itself by a new departure in State-houses. 
In the city are several of the State institutions, 
most of them occupying ample grounds with fine sites 
in the suburbs. Conspicuous on high ground in the 
city is the Blind Asylum, a very commodious, and 
well-conducted institution, with about 80 inmates. 
The School for Deaf-mutes, with 125 pupils, is under 
very able management. But I confess that the State 
Lunatic Asylum gave me a genuine surprise, and if 



308 South and West. 

the civilization of Arkansas were to be judged by it, 
it would take high rank among the States. It is a 
very fine building, well constructed and admirably 
planned, on a site commanding a noble view, with 
eighty acres of forest and garden. More land is 
needed to carry out the superintendent's idea of labor, 
and to furnish supplies for the patients, of whom 
there are 450, the men and women, colored and white, 
in separate wings. The builders seem to have taken 
advantage of all the Eastern experience and shunned 
the Eastern mistakes, and the result is an establishment 
with all the modern improvements and conveniences, 
conducted in the most enlightened spirit. I do not 
know a better large State asylum in the United 
States. Of the State penitentiary nothing good can 
be said. Arkansas is still struggling with the wretch- 
ed lease system, the frightful abuses of which she is 
beginning to appreciate. The penitentiary is a sort 
of depot for convicts, who are distributed about the 
State by the contractors. At the time of my visit a 
considerable number were there, more or less crippled 
and sick, who had been rescued from barbarous treat- 
ment in one of the mines. A gang were breaking 
stones in the yard, a few were making cigars, and the 
dozen women in the women's ward were doing laun- 
dry-work. But nothing appeared to be done to im- 
prove the condition of the inmates. In Southern 
prisons I notice comparatively few of the "profes- 
sional " class which so largely make the population of 
Northern penitentiaries, and I always fancy that in 
the rather easy-going management, wanting the cast- 
iron discipline, the lot of the prisoners is not so 
hard. Thus far among the colored people not much 



Mem;phis and Little' Boole. 309 

odium attaches to one of their race who has been in 
prison. 

The public-school system of the State is slowly im- 
proving, hampered by want of Constitutional power 
to raise money for the schools. By the Constitution, 
State taxes are limited to one per cent. ; county taxes 
to one-half of one per cent., with an addition of one- 
half of one per cent, to pay debts existing when the 
Constitution was adopted in 1874; city taxes the 
same as county ; in addition, for the support of com- 
mon schools, the Assembly may lay a tax not to ex- 
ceed two mills on the dollar on the taxable property 
of the State, and an annual ^?er capita tax of one dol- 
lar on every male inhabitant over the age of twenty- 
one years ; and it may also authorize each school dis- 
trict to raise for itself, by vote of its electors, a tax 
for school purposes not to exceed five mills on the 
dollar. The towns generally vote this additional tax, 
but in most of the country districts schools are, not 
maintained for more than three months in the year. 
The population of the State is about 1,000,000, in an 
area of 53,045 square miles. The scholastic population 
enrolled has increased steadily for several years, and 
in 1886 was 164,757, of which 122,296 were white and 
42,461 were colored. The total population of school 
age (including the enrolled) was 358,006, of which 
266,188 were white and 91,818 colored. The school 
fund available for that year was $1,327,710. The in- 
creased revenue and enrolment are encouraging, but 
it is admitted that the schools of the State (sparsely 
settled as it is) cannot be what they should be with- 
out more money to build decent school -houses, em- 
ploy competent teachers, and have longer sessions. 



310 South and West 

Little Rock has fourteen school -houses, only one or 
two of which are commendable. The High-school, 
with 50 pupils and 2 teachers, is held in a district 
building. The colored people have their fair propor- 
tion of schools, with teacliers of their own race. Lit- 
tle Rock is abundantly able to tax itself for better 
schools, as it is for better pavements. In all the 
schools most attention seems to be paid to mathemat- 
ics, and it is noticeable how proficient colored chil- 
dren under twelve are in figures. 

The most important school in the State, which I 
did not see, is the Industrial University at Fayette- 
ville, which received the Congressional land grant 
and is a State beneficiary ; its property, including en- 
dowments and the University farm, is reckoned at 
8300,000. The general intention is to give a practi- 
cal industrial education. The collegiate department, 
a course of three years, has 77 pupils ; in the prepara- 
tory department are about 200 ; but the catalogue, in- 
cluding special students in art and music, the medical 
department at Little Rock of 60, and the Kormal 
School at Pine Bluff of 215, foots up about 600 stu- 
dents. The University is situated in a part of the 
State most attractive in its scenery and most health- 
ful, and offers a chance for every sort of mental and 
manual training. 

The most widely famous place in the State is the 
Hot Springs. I should like to have seen it when it 
was in a state of nature ; I should like to see it when 
it gets the civilization of a European bath-place. It 
has been a popular and even crowded resort for sev- 
eral years, and the medical treatment w^hich can be 
given there in connection with the use of the waters 



Memj)his and Little Bock. 311 

is so nearly a specific for certain serious diseases, and 
going there is so much a necessity for many invalids, 
that access to it ought by this time to be easy. But 
it is not. It is fifty -five miles south-west of Little 
Rock, but to reach it the traveller must leave the 
Iron Mountain road at Malvern for a ride over a 
branch line of some twenty miles. Unfortunately 
this is a narrow-gauge road, and however ill a person 
may be, a change of cars must be made at Malvern. 
This is a serious annoyance, and it is a wonder that 
the main railways and the hotel and bath keepers 
have not united to rid themselves of the monopoly of 
the narrow-gauge road. 

The valley of the Springs is over seven hundred 
feet above the sea ; the country is rough and broken ; 
the hills, clad with small pines and hard-wood, which 
rise on either side of the valley to the height of two 
or three hundred feet, make an agreeable impression 
of greenness; and the place is capable, by reason of its 
irregularity, of becoming beautiful as well as pictu- 
resque. It is still in the cheap cottage and raw brick 
stage. The situation suggests Carlsbad, which is also 
jammed into a narrow valley. The Hot Springs 
Mountain — that is, the mountain from the side of 
which all the hot springs (about seventy) flow — is a 
Government reservation. Nothing is permitted to be 
built on it except the Government hospital for sol- 
diers and sailors, the public bath-houses along the 
foot, and one hotel, which holds over on the reserved 
land. The Government has enclosed and piped the 
springs, built a couple of cement reservoirs, and lets 
the bath privileges to private parties at thirty dollars 
a tub, the number of tubs being limited. The rent 



312 South atid West. 

money the Governiuent is supposed to devote to the 
improvement of the mountain. This has now a pri- 
vate lookout tower on the summit, from which a most 
extensive view is had over the well-wooded State, and 
it can be made a lovely park. There is a good deal 
of criticism about favoritism in letting the bath privi- 
leges, and the words "ring'' and ''syndicate-' are 
constantly heard. Before improvements were made, 
the hot water discharged into a creek at the base of 
the hill. This creek is now arclied over and become 
a street, with the bath-houses ou one side and shops 
and shanties on the other. Difficulty about obtaining 
a good title to land has until recently stood in the 
way of permanent improvements. All claims have 
now been adjudicated upon, the Government is pre- 
pared to give a perfect title to all its own land, ex- 
cept the mountain, forever reserved, and purchasers 
can be sure of peaceful occupation. 

Opposite the Hot Springs Mountain rises the long 
sharp ridge of "West Mountain, from which the Gov- 
ernment does not permit the foliage to be stripped. 
The city runs around and back of this mountain, fol- 
lows the winding valley to the north, climbs up all 
the irregular ridges in the neighborhood, and spreads 
itself over the valley on the south, near the Ouachita 
River. It is estimated that there are 10,000 residents 
in this rapidly growing town. Houses stick on tlie 
sides of the hills, perch on terraces, nestle in the ra- 
vines. Nothing is regular, nothing is as might have 
been expected, but it is all interesting, and promising 
of something pleasing and picturesque in the future. 
All the springs, except one, on Hot Springs 3Iountain 
are hot, with a temperature ranging from 93^ to 157^ 



Memjphis and Little Boclc. 313 

Fahrenheit ; there are plenty of springs in and among 
the other hills, but they are all cold. It is estimated 
that the present quantity of hot water, much of 
which runs to waste, would supply about 19,000 per- 
sons daily with 25 gallons each. The water is per- 
fectly clear, has no odor, and is very agreeable for 
bathing. That remarkable cures are performed here 
the evidence does not permit one to doubt, nor can 
one question the wonderfully rejuvenating effect 
upon the system of a course of its waters. 

It is necessary- to suggest, however, that the value 
of the springs to invalids and to all visitors would be 
greatly enhanced by such regulations as those that 
govern Carlsbad and Marienbad in Bohemia. The 
success of those great " cures " depends largely upon 
the regimen enforced there, the impossibility of in- 
dulging in an improper diet, and the prevailing regu- 
larity of habits as to diet, sleep, and exercise. There 
is need at Hot Springs for more hotel accommodation 
of the sort that will make comfortable invalids accus- 
tomed to luxury at home, and at least one new and 
very large hotelis promised soon to supply this de- 
mand; but what Hot Springs needs is the comforts 
of life, and not means of indulgence at table or other- 
wise. Perhaps it is impossible for the American pub- 
lic, even the sick part of it, to submit itself to disci- 
pline, but we never will have the full benefit of our 
many curative springs until it consents to do so. 
Patients, no doubt, try to follow the varying regimen 
imposed by different doctors, but it is difficult to do 
so amid all the temptations of a go-as-you-please bath- 
place. A general regimen of diet applicable to all 
visit 01*3 is the only safe rule. Under such enlight- 



314 South and West 

encd rules as prevail at Marienbad, and with the op- 
portimity for mild cutcrtainment in pretty shops, 
agreeable walks and drives, with music and the hun- 
dred devices to make the time pass pleasantly, Hot 
Springs would become one of the most important san- 
itary resorts in the world. It is now in a very crude 
state ; but it has the water, the climate, the hills and 
woods ; good saddle-horses are to be had, and it is an 
interesting country to I'idc over ; those who frequent 
the place are attached to it ; and time and taste and 
money will, no doubt, transform it into a place of 
beauty. 

Arkansas surprised the world by the exhibition it 
made of itself at Xew Orleans, not only for its natural 
resources, but for the range and variety of its pro- 
ductions. That it is second to no other State in its 
adaptability to cotton-raising was known ; that it had 
magnificent forests and large coal-fields and valuable 
minerals in its mountains was known ; but that it 
raised fruit superior to any other in the South-west, 
and quite equal to any in the North, was a revelation. 
The mountainous part of the State, where some of the 
hills rise to the altitude of 2500 feet, gives as good 
apples, pears, and i:)eaches as are raised in any portion 
of the Union ; indeed, this fruit has taken the first 
prize in exhibitions from Massachusetts to Texas. It 
is as remarkable for flavor and firmness as it is for 
size and beauty. This region is also a good vineyard 
country. The State boasts more miles of navigable 
waters than any other, it has variety of soil and of 
surface to fit it for every crop in the temperate lati- 
tudes, and it has a very good climate. The range of 
northern mountains protects it from *' northers," and 



Mevvphis and Little Mock. 315 

its elevated portions have cold enough for a tonic. 
Of course the low and swampy lands arc subject to 
malaria. The State has just begun to appreciate itself, 
and has organized efforts to promote immigration. It 
has employed a competent State geologist, who is do- 
incT excellent service. The United States has still a 
large quantity of valuable land in the State open to 
settlement under the homestead and pre-emption laws. 
The State itself has over 2,000,000 acres of land, for- 
feited and granted to it in various ways ; of this, the 
land forfeited for taxes will be given to actual settlers 
in tracts of 160 acres to each person, and the rest can 
be purchased at a low price. I cannot go into all the 
details, but the reader may be assured that the immi- 
gration committee make an exceedingly good showing 
for settlers who wish to engage in farming, fruit-rais- 
ing, mining, or lumbering. The Constitution of the 
State is very democratic, the statute laws are stringent 
in morality, the limitations upon town and city in- 
debtedness are severe, the rate of taxation is very low, 
and the State debt is small. The State, in short, is in 
a good condition for a vigorous development of its 
resources. 

There is a popular notion that Arkansas is a " bowie- 
knife" State, a lawless and an ignorant State. I 
shared this before I went there. I cannot disprove 
the ignorance of the country districts. As I said, 
more money is needed to make the public-school sys- 
tem effective. But in its general aspect the State is 
as orderly and moral as any. The laws against car- 
rying concealed weapons are strict, and are enforced. 
It is a fairly temperate State. Under the high license 
and local option laws, prohibition prevails in two- 



316 South and ^Yest. 

thirds of the State, and the popular vote is strictly 
enforced. In forty-eight of the seventy-five counties 
no license is granted, in other counties only a single 
town votes license, and in many of the remaining 
counties many towns refuse it. In five counties only 
is liquor perfectly free. A special law prohibits 
liquor-selling within five miles of a college ; within 
three miles of a church or school, a majority of the 
adult inhabitants can prohibit it. With regard to 
liquor-selling, woman suffrage practically exists. The 
law says that on petition of a majority of the adult 
population in any district the county judge must re- 
fuse license. The women, therefore, without going 
into politics, sign the petitions and create prohibition. 

The street-cars and railways make no discrimination 
as to color of passengers. Everywhere I went I no- 
ticed that the intercourse between the two races was 
friendly. There is much good land on the railway be- 
tween Little Rock and Arkansas City, heavily tim- 
bered, especially with the clean-boled, stately gum- 
trees. At Pine Bluff, which has a population of 5000, 
there is a good colored Kormal School, and the town 
has many prosperous negroes, who support a race- 
track of their own, and keep up a county fair. I was 
t<)ld that the most enterprising man in the place, the 
largest street-railway owner, is black as a coal. Far- 
ther down the road the country is not so good, the 
houses are mostly poor shanties, and the population, 
largely colored, appears to be of a shiftless character. 
Arkansas Cii^y itself, low-lying on the Mississippi, has 
a bad reputation. 

Little Rock, already a railway centre of importance, 
is prosperous and rapidly improving. It has the set- 



Memphis and Little Bock, 317 

tied, temperate, orderly society of an Eastern town, 
but democratic in its habits, and with a cordial hospi- 
tality which is more provincial than fashionable. I 
heard there a good chamber concert of stringed in- 
struments, one of a series which had been kept up by 
subscription all winter, and would continue the coming 
winter. The performers were young Bohemians. The 
gentleman at whose pleasant, old-fashioned house I 
was entertained, a leading lawyer and jurist in the 
South-west, was a good linguist, had travelled in most 
parts of the civilized globe, had on his table the cur- 
rent literature of France, England, Germany, and 
America, a daily Paris newspaper, one New York 
journal (to give its name might impugn his good taste 
in the judgment of every other New York journal), 
and a very large and well-selected library, two-thirds 
of which was French, and nearly half of the remainder 
German. This was one of the many things I found in 
Arkansas which I did not expect to find. 



XIV. 
ST. LOUIS AND KANSAS CITY. 

St. Louis is eighty years old. It was incorporated 
as a town in 1808, thirteen years before the admission 
of Missouri into the Union as a State. In 1764 a 
company of thirty Frenchmen made a settlement on its 
site and gave it its .distinguished name. For nearly 
half a century, under French and Spanish jurisdiction 
alternately, it was little more than a trading post, and 
at the beginning of this century it contained only 
about a thousand inhabitants. This period, however, 
gave it a romantic historic background, and as late as 
1853, when its poi^ulation was a hundred thousand, it 
preserved French characteristics and a French appear- 
ance — small brick houses and narrow streets crowded 
down by the river. To the stranger it was the Plant- 
ers' Hotel and a shoal of big steamboats moored along 
an extensive levee roaring with river traffic. Crowded, 
ill-paved, dirty streets, a few country houses on elevated 
sites, a population forced into a certain activity by 
trade, but hindered in municipal improvement by 
French conservatism, and touched with the rust of sla- 
very — that was the St. Louis of thirty-five years ago. 

Now everything is changed as by some magic touch. 
The growth of the city has always been solid, unspecu- 
lative, conservative in its business methods, with some 
persistence of the old French influence, only gradually 
l^arting from its ancient traditions, preserving always 



St Louis and Kansas City, 319 

something of the aristocratic flavor of " old families," 
accounted " slow " in the impatience of youth. But 
it has burst its old bounds, and grown with a rapidity 
that would be marvellous in any other country. The 
levee is comparatively deserted, although the trade on 
the lower river is actually -very large. The traveller 
who enters the city from the east passes over the St. 
Louis Bridge, a magnificent structure and one of the 
engineering wonders of the modern world, plunges into 
a tunnel under the business portion of the old city, and 
emerges into a valley covered with a net-work of rail- 
way-tracks, and occupied by apparently interminable 
lines of passenger coaches and freight cars, out of the 
confusion of which he makes his way with difficulty to 
a carriage, impressed at once by the enormous railway 
traffic of the city. This is the site of the proposed 
Union Depot, which waits upon the halting action of 
the Missouri Pacific sj'-stem. The eastern outlet for 
all this growing traffic is over the two tracks of the 
bridge ; these are entirely inadequate, and during a 
portion of the year there is a serious blockade of 
freight. A second bridge over the Mississippi is al- 
ready a necessity to the commerce of the city, and is 
certain to be built within a few years. 

St. Louis, since the war, has spread westward over 
the gentle ridges which parallel the river, and become 
a city vast in territory and most attractive in appear- 
ance. While the business portion has expanded into 
noble avenues with stately business and public edifices, 
the residence parts have a beauty, in handsome streets 
and varied architecture, that is a continual surprise to 
one who has not seen the city for twenty years. I had 
set down the length of the city along the river-front 



320 South and West. 

as thirteen miles, with a depth of about six miles; but 
the official statistics are: length of river-front, 19.15 
miles; length of western limits, 21.27; extent north 
and south in an air line, 17; and length east and west 
on an air line, 6.62. This gives an area of 61.37 square 
miles, or 39,276 acres. This includes the public parks 
(containing 2095 acres), and is sufficient room for the 
population of 450,000, which the city doubtless has in 
1888. By the United States census of 1870 the popula- 
tion was reported much larger than it was, the figures 
having no doubt been manipulated for political pur- 
poses. Estimating the natural increase from this false 
report, the city was led to claim a population far be- 
yond the actual number, and unjustly suffered a little 
ridicule for a mistake for which it was not responsible. 
The United States census- of 1880 gave it 350,522. 
During the eight years from 1880 there were erected 
18,574 new dwelling-houses, at a cost of over fifty 
millions of dollars. 

The great territorial extension of the city in 1876 
was for a time a disadvantage, for it threw upon the 
city the care of enormous street extensions,made a spo- 
radic movement of population beyond Grand Avenue, 
which left hiatuses in improvement, and created a sort 
of furor of fashion for getting away from what to me 
is still the most attractive residence portion of the 
town, namely, the elevated ridges west of Fourteenth 
Street, crossed by Lucas Place and adjoining avenues. 
In this quarter, and east of Grand Avenue, are fine 
high streets, with detached houses and grounds, many 
of them both elegant and comfortable, and this is the 
region of the Washington University, some of the 
finest club - hotises, and handsomest churches. The 



St. Zouis and Kansas City. 321 

movements of city populations, however, are not to be 
accounted for. One of the finest parts of the town, 
and one of the oldest of the better residence parts, that 
south of the railways, containing broad, w^ell-planted 
avenues, and very stately old homes, and the exquisite 
Lafayette Park, is almost w^holly occupied now by 
Germans, who make up so large a proportion of the 
population. 

One would have predicted at an early day that the 
sightly bluffs below the city would be the resort of 
fashion, and be occupied with fine country houses. 
But the movement has been almost altogether west- 
ward and awa}^ from the river. And this rolling, 
wooded region is most inviting, elevated, open, cheer- 
ful. No other city in the West has fairer suburbs for 
expansion and adornment, and its noble avenues, dotted 
with conspicuously fine residences, give promise of 
great beauty and elegance. In its late architectural 
development, St. Louis, like Chicago, is just in time to 
escape a very mediocre and merely imitative period 
in American building. Beyond Grand Avenue the 
stranger will be shown Vandeventer Place, a semi- 
private oblong park, surrounded by many pretty and 
some notably fine residences. Two of them are by 
Richardson, and the city has other specimens of his 
work. I cannot refrain from again speaking of the 
effect that this original genius has had upon American 
architecture, especially in the West, when money and 
enterprise afforded him free scope. It is not too 
much to say that he created a new era, and the in- 
fluence of his ideas is seen everywhere in the work of 
architects who have caught his spirit. 

The city has addressed itself to the occupation and 
21 



322 South and West. 

adornment of its great territory and the improvement 
of its most travelled thoroughfares with admirable pub- 
lic spirit. The rolling nature of the ground has been 
taken advantage of to give it a nearly perfect system 
of drainage and sewerage. The old pavements of soft 
limestone, which w^ere dust in dry weather and liquid 
mud in wet weather, are being replaced by granite in 
the business parts and asphalt and wood blocks (laid 
on a concrete base) in the residence portions. Up to 
the beginning of 1888 this new pavement had cost 
nearly three and a half million dollars, and over tliirty- 
three miles of it were granite blocks. Street railways 
have also been pushed all over the territory. The total 
of street lines is already over one hundred and fifty- 
four miles, and over thirty miles of these give rapid 
transit by cable. These facilities make the whole of 
the wide territory available for business and residence, 
and give the poorest inhabitants the means of reach- 
ing the parks. 

The park system is on the most liberal scale, both 
public and private; the parks are already famous for 
extent and beaut3^,but when the projected connecting 
boulevards are made they will attain world - wide 
notoriety. The most extensive of the private parks 
is that of 'the combined Agricultural Fair Grounds 
and Zoological Gardens. Here is held annually the 
St. Louis Fair, which is said to be the largest in the 
United States. The enclosure is finely laid out and 
planted, and contains an extensive park, exhibition 
buildings, cottages, a race-track, an amphitheatre, which 
suggests in size and construction some of the largest 
Spanish bull-rings, and picturesque houses for Avild 
animals. The zoological exhibition is a very good 



St. Louis and Kansas City. 323 

one. There are eighteen public parks. One of the 
smaller (thirty acres) of these, and one of the oldest, 
is Lafayette Park, on the south side. Its beauty sur- 
prised me more than almost anything I saw in the 
city. It is a gem; just that artificial control of nature 
which most pleases — forest-trees, a pretty lake, fount- 
ains, flowers, walks planned to give everywhere ex- 
quisite vistas. It contains a statue of Thomas H. 
Benton, which may be a likeness, but utterly fails to 
give the character of the man. The largest is Forest 
Park, on the west side, a tract of 1372 acres, mostly 
forest, improved by excellent drives, and left as much 
as possible in a natural condition. It has ten miles 
of good driving-roads. This park cost the city about 
$850,000, and nearly as much more has been expended 
on it since its purchase. The surface has great variety 
of slopes, glens, elevations, lakes, and meadows. During 
the summer music is furnished in a handsome pagoda, 
and the place is much resorted to. Fronting the boule- 
vard are statues of Governor Edward Bates and Frank 
P. Blair, the latter very characteristic. 

Next in importance is Tower Grove Park, an oblong 
of 276 acres. This and Shaw's Garden, adjoining, 
have been given to the city by Mr. Henry Shaw, an 
Englishman who made his fortune in the city, and 
they remain under his control as to care and adorn- 
ment during his life. Those who have never seen 
foreign parks and pleasure-gardens can obtain a very 
good idea of their formal elegance and impressiveness 
by visiting Tower Grove Park and the Botanical Gar- 
dens. They will see the perfection of lawns, avenues 
ornamented by statuary, flower-beds, and tasteful walks. 
The entrances, with stone towers and lodges, suggest 



324 South and West 

similar effects in France and in England. About the 
music-stand are white marble busts of six chief musical 
composers. The drives are adorned with three statues 
in bronze, thirt}^ feet high, designed and cast in Munich 
by Frederick Miiller. They are figures of Shake- 
speare, Humboldt, and Columbus, and so nobly con- 
ceived and executed that the patriotic American must 
wish they had been done in this country. Of Shaw's 
Botanical Garden I need to say little, for its fame as 
a comprehensive and classified collection of trees, 
plants, and flowers is world-wide. It has no equal in 
this country. As a place for botanical study no one 
appreciated it more highly than the late Professor Asa 
Gray. Sometimes a peculiar classification is followed; 
one locality is devoted to economic plants — camphor, 
quinine, cotton, tea, coffee, etc. ; another to " Plants of 
the Bible." The space of fifty-four acres, enclosed by 
high stone walls, contains, besides the open garden and 
allees and glass houses, the summer residence and the 
tomb of Mr. Shaw. This old gentleman, still vigor- 
ous in his eighty-eighth year, is planning new adorn- 
ments in the way of statuary and busts of statesmen, 
poets, and scientists. His plans are all liberal and 
cosmopolitan. For over thirty years his botanical 
knowledge, his taste, and abundant wealth and leisure 
have been devoted to the creation of this wonderful 
garden and park, which all bear the stamp of his 
strong individuality, and of a certain pleasing foreign 
formality. What a source of unfailing delight it 
must have been to him! As we sat talking with him 
I thought how other millionaires, if they knew how, 
might envy a matured life, after the struggle for a 
competency is over, devoted to this most rational en- 



St. Louis and Kansas City. 325 

joyment, in an occupation as elevating to the taste as 
to tlie character, and having in mind always the public 
good. Over the entrance gate is the inscription, 
"Missouri Botanical Gardens." When the city has 
full control of the garden the word "Missouri " should 
be replaced by " Shaw." 

The money expended for public parks gives some 
idea of the liberal and far-sighted provision for the 
health and pleasure of a great city. The parks orig- 
inally cost the city $1,309,944, and three millions 
more have been spent upon their improvement and 
maintenance. This indicates an enlightened spirit, 
which we shall see characterizes the city in other 
things, and is evidence of a high degree of culture. 

Of the commerce and manufactures of the town I 
can give no adequate statement without going into 
details, which my space forbids. The importance of 
the Mississippi River is much emphasized, not only 
as an actual highway of traffic, but as a regulator of 
railway rates. The town has by the official reports 
been discriminated against, and even the Inter-State 
Act has not afforded all the relief expected. In 1887 
the city shipped to foreign markets by way of the 
Mississippi and the jetties 3,973,000 bushels of wheat 
and 7,365,000 bushels of corn — a larger exportation 
than ever before except in the years 1880 and 1881. 
An outlet like this is of course a check on railway 
charges. The trade of the place employs a banking 
capital of fifteen millions. The deposits in 1887 were 
thirty-seven millions; the clearings over 8894,527,731 
— the largest ever reached, and over ten per cent, in 
excess of the clearings of 1886. To whatever depart- 
ments I turn in the report of the Merchants' Ex- 



326 South and West. 

change for 1887 I find a vigorous growth — as in build- 
ing — and in most articles of commerce a great increase. 
It appears by the tonnage statements that, taking 
receipts and shipments together, 12,060,995 tons of 
freight were handled in and out during 1SS6, against 
14,359,059 tons in 18S7 — a gain of nineteen and a half 
per cent. The buildings in 1886 cost 87,030,819; in 
1887, $8,162,914. There were $44,740 more stamps 
sold at the post-ofiice in 1887 than in 1886. The 
custom-house collections were less than in 1886, but 
reached the figures of $1,414,747. The assessed value 
of real and personal property in 1887 was $217,142,- 
320, on which the rate of taxation in the old city 
limits was 82.50. 

It is never my intention in these papers to mention 
individual enterprises for their own sake, but I do not 
hesitate to do so when it is necessary in order to illus- 
trate some peculiar development. It is a curious 
matter of observation that so many Western cities 
have one or more specialties in which they excel — 
houses of trade or manufacture larger and more im- 
portant than can be found elsewhere. St. Louis finds 
itself in this category in regard to several establish- 
ments. One of these is a wooden-ware company, the 
largest of the sort in the country, a house which 
gathers its peculiar goods from all over the United 
States, and distributes them almost as widely — a busi- 
ness of gigantic proportions and bewildering detail. 
Its annual sales amount to as much as the sales of all 
the houses in its line in New York, Chicago, and Cin- 
cinnati together. Another is a hardware company, 
wholesale and retail, also the largest of its kind in the 
country, with sales annually amounting to six mill- 



St Zouis and Kansas City. 327 

ions of dollars, a very largo amount when wc con- 
sider that it is made up of an infinite number of 
small and cheap articles in iron, from a fish-hook up — 
indeed, over fifty thousand separate articles. I spent 
half a day in this establishment, walking through its 
departments, noting the unequalled system of com- 
pact display, classification, and methods of sale and 
shipment. Merely as a method of system in busi- 
ness I have never seen anything more interesting. 
Another establishment, important on account of its 
central position in the continent and its relation to 
the Louisiana sugar-fields, is the St. Louis Sugar Re- 
finery. 

The refinery proper is the largest building in the 
\Yestern country used for manufacturing purposes, 
and, together with its adjuncts of cooper-shops and 
warehouses, covers five entire blocks and employs 500 
men. It has a capacity of working up 400 tons of 
raw sugar a day, but runs only to the extent of about 
200 tons a day, making the value of its present prod- 
uct $7,500,000 a year. 

During the winter and spring it uses Louisiana 
sugars ; the remainder of the year, sugars of Cuba 
and the Sandwich Islands. Like all other refineries 
of which I have inquired, this reckons the advent 
of the Louisiana crop as an important regulator of 
prices. This establishment, in common with other 
industries of the city, has had to complain of busi- 
ness somewhat hampered by discrimination in railway 
rates. St. Louis also has what I suppose, from the 
figures accessible, to be the largest lager-beer brew- 
ing establishment in the world ; its solid, gigantic, 
and architecturally imposing buildings lift themselves 



328 South and West. 

up like a fortress over the thirty acres of ground they 
cover. Its manufacture and sales in 1887 were 456,- 
511 barrels of beer — an increase of nearly 100,000 
since 1885-86. It exports largely to Mexico, South 
America, the "West Indies, and Australia. The es- 
tablishment is a marvel of system and ingenious de- 
vices. It employs 1200 laborers, to whom it pays 
8500,000 a year. Some of the details are of interest. 
In the bottling department we saw workmen lilling, 
corking, labelling, and packing at the rate of 100,000 
bottles a day. In a year 25,000,000 bottles are used, 
packed in 400,000 barrels and boxes. The consump- 
tion of barley is 1,100,000 bushels yearly, and of 
hops over 700,000 pounds, and the amount of water 
used for all purposes is 250,000,000 gallons — nearly 
enough to float our navy. The charges for freight 
received and shipped by rail amount to nearly a mill- 
ion dollars a year. There are several other large brew- 
eries in the city. The total product manufactured 
in 1887 was 1,383,361 barrels, equal to 43,575,872 
gallons — more than three times the amount of 1877. 
The barley used in the city and vicinit}^ was 2,932,- 
192 bushels, of which 340,335 bushels came from 
Canada. The direct export of beer during 1887 to 
foreign countries was equal to 1,924,108 quart bottles. 
The greater part of the barley used comes from Iowa, 
Minnesota, and Wisconsin. 

It is useless to enumerate the many railways which 
touch and affect St. Louis. The most considerable is 
the agglomeration known as the Missouri Pacific, or 
South-western System, which operated 6994 miles of 
road on January 1, 1888. This great aggregate is 
likely to be much diminished by the surrender of 



St. Loitis and Kansas City. 329 

lines, but the railway facilities of the city are con- 
stantly extending. 

There are figures enough to show that St.' Louis is 
a prosperous city, constantly developing new enter- 
prises with fresh energy ; to walk its handsome 
streets and drive about its great avenues and parks is 
to obtain an impression of a cheerful town on the way 
to be most attractive ; but its chief distinction lies in 
its social and intellectual life, and in the spirit that 
has made it a pioneer in so many educational move- 
ments. It seems to me a very good place to study 
the influence of speculative thought in economic and 
practical affairs. The question I am oftenest asked 
is, whether the little knot of speculative philosophers 
accidentally gathered there a few years ago, and who 
gave a sort of fame to the city, have had any perma- 
nent influence. For years they discussed abstrac- 
tions ; they sustained for some time a very remark- 
able periodical of speculative philosophy, and in a 
limited sphere they maintained an elevated tone of 
thought and life quite in contrast with our general 
materialism. The circle is broken, the members are 
scattered. Probably the town never understood them, 
perhaps they did not altogether understand each 
other, and maybe the tremendous conflict of Kant 
and Hegel settled nothing. But if there is anything 
that can be demonstrated in this world it is the in- 
fluence of abstract thought upon practical affairs in 
the long-run. And although one may not be able to 
point to any definite thing created or established by 
this metaphysical movement, I think I can see that it 
was a leaven that had a marked effect in the social, 
and especially in the educational, life of the town, and 



330 South and Wtst 

liberalized minds, and opened the way for the trial of 
theories in education. One of the disciples declares 
that the State Constitution of Missouri and the char- 
ter of St. Louis are distinctly Hegelian. However this 
may be, both these organic laws are uncommonly wise 
in their provisions. A study of the evolution of the 
city government is one of the most interesting that 
the student can make. Many of the provisions of 
the charter are admirable, such as those securing 
honest elections, furnishing financial checks, and 
guarding against public debt. The mayor is elected 
for four years, and the important offices filled by his 
appointment are not vacant until the beginning of 
the third year of his appointment, so that hope of 
reward for political work is too dim to aifect the mer- 
its of an election. The composition and election of 
the school board is also worthy of notice. Of the 
twenty-one members, seven are elected on a general 
ticket, and the remaining fourteen by districts, made 
by consolidating the twenty-eight city wards, mem- 
bers to serve four years, divided into two classes. 
This arrangement secures immunity from the ward 
politician. 

St. Louis is famous for its public schools, and es- 
pecially for the enlightened methods, and the willing- 
ness to experiment in improving them. The school 
expenditures for the year ending June 30, 188 7, were 
$1,005,773; the school property in lots, buildings, 
and furniture in 1885 was estimated at 83,445,254. 
The total number of pupils enrolled was 5G,936. 
These required about 1200 teachers, of whom over a 
thousand were women. The actual average of pupils 
to each teacher was about 42. There were 100 school 



/St. Zotds and Kansas City. 331 

buildings, with a seating capacity for about 50,000 
scliolai'H. Of the district scliools 13 were colored, in 
wliicli were employed 78 colored teachers. The sal- 
aries of teachers arc progressive, according to length 
of service. As for instance, the principal of the 
High-school has $2400 the first year, ^2500 the sec- 
ond, 5i^2GOO the third, $2750 the fourth ; a liead as- 
sistant in a district school, $G50 the first year, $700 
the second, 1750 the third, 8800 the fourth, 8850 the 
fifth. 

The few schools that I saw fully sustained their 
public reputation as to methods, discipline, and at- 
tainments. The Normal School, of something over 
100 pupils, nearly all the girls being graduates of the 
High-school, was admirable in drill, in literary train- 
ing, in calisthenic exercises. The High-school is also 
admirable, a school with a thoroughly elevated tone 
and an able principal. Of the 600 pupils at least 
two-thirds were girls. From appearances I should 
judge that it is attended by children of the most in- 
telligent families, for certainly the girls of the junior 
and senior classes, in manner, looks, dress, and attain- 
ments, compared favorably with those of one of the 
best girls' schools I have seen anywhere, the Mary 
Institute, which is a department of the Washington 
University. This fact is most important, for the ex- 
cellence of our public schools (for the product of 
good men and women) depends largely upon their 
p)opularity with the well-to-do classes. One of the 
most interesting schools I saw was the Jefferson, pre- 
sided over by a woman, having fine fire-proof build- 
ings and 1100 pupils, nearly all whom are of foreign 
parentage — German, Russian, and Italian, v»'ith many 



332 South and West, 

Hebrews also — a finely ordered, wide-awake school of 
eight grades. The kindergarten here was the best I 
saw; good teachers, bright and happy little children, 
with natural manners, throwing themselves gracefully 
into their games with enjoyment and without self- 
cousciousness, and exhibiting exceedingly pretty fan- 
cy and kindergarten work. In St. Louis the kinder- 
garten is a part of the public-school system, and the 
experiment is one of general interest. The question 
cannot be called settled. In the first place the ex- 
periment is hampered in St. Louis by a decision of 
the Supreme Court that the public money cannot be 
used for children out of the school age, that is, under 
six and over twenty. This prevents teaching English 
to adult foreigners in the evening schools, and, rigidly 
applied, it shuts out pupils from the kindergarten un- 
der six. One advantage from the kindergarten was 
expected to be an extension of the school period; and 
there is no doubt that the kindergarten instruction 
ought to begin before the age of six, especially for 
the mass of children who miss home training and 
home care. As a matter of fact, many of the chil- 
dren I saw in the kindergartens were only construct- 
ively six years old. It cannot be said, also, that the 
Froebel system is fully understood or accepted. In 
my observation, the success of the kindergarten de- 
pends entirely upon the teacher; where she is compe- 
tent, fully believes in and understands the Froebel 
system, and is enthusiastic, the pupils are interested 
and alert; otherwise they are listless, and fail to get 
the benefit of it. The Froebel system is the develop- 
ing the concrete idea in education, and in the opinion 
of his disciples this is as important for children of the 



/St. Louis and Kansas City. 333 

intelligent and well-to-do as for those of the poor and 
ignorant. They resist, therefore, the attempt which 
is constantly made, to introduce the primary work 
into the kindergarten. But for the six years' limit 
the kindergarten in St. Louis would have a better 
chance in its connection with the public schools. As 
the majority of children leave school for work at the 
age of twelve or fourteen, there is little time enough 
given for book education; many educators think time 
is wasted in the kindergarten, and they advocate the 
introduction of what they call kindergarten features 
in the primary classes. This is called by the disci- 
ples of Froebel an entire abandonment of his system. 
I should like to see the kindergarten in connection 
with the public school tried long enough to demon- 
strate all that is claimed for it in its influence on 
mental development, character, and manners, but it 
seems unlikely to be done in St. Louis, unless the 
public-school year begins at least as early as five, or, 
better still, is specially unlimited for kindergarten 
23upils. 

Except in the primary work in drawing and model- 
ling, there is no manual training feature in the St. 
Louis public schools. The teaching of German is re- 
cently dropped from all the district schools (though 
retained in the High), in accordance with the well- 
founded idea of Americanizing our foreign popula- 
tion as rapidly as possible. 

One of the most important institutions in the Missis- 
sippi Valley, and one that exercises a decided influence 
upon the intellectual and social life of St. Louis, and is 
a fair measure of its culture and the value of the high- 
er education, is the Washington University, which was 



33J: South and West 

incorporated in 1853, and wiis presided over until his 
death, in 1SS7, by the hite Chancellor William Green- 
leaf Eliot, of revered memory. It covers the whole 
range of university studies, except theology, and al- 
lows no instruction either sectarian in religion or par- 
tisan in politics, nor the application of any sectarian 
or party test in the election of professors, teachers, or 
officei^. Its real estate and buildings in use for edu- 
cational purposes cost ^625,000; its libraries, scientitio 
apparatus, casts, and machinery cost over $100,000, and 
it has investments for revenue amounting to over $050,- 
000. The University comprehends an undergraduate 
department, including the college (a thorough class- 
ical, literary, and philosophical course, with about six- 
ty students), open to v%*omen. and the polytechnic, an 
admirably equipped school of science: the St. Louis 
Law School, of excellent reputation ; the Manual Train- 
ing School, the most celebrated school of this sort^ and 
one that has funiished more manual training teachers 
than any other: the Henry Shaw School of Botany; 
the St. Louis School of Fine Arts; the Smith Acad- 
emy, for boys : and the Mary Institute, one of the 
roomiest and most cheerful school buildings I know, 
where 400 girls, whose collective appearance need not 
fear comparison with any in the country, enjoy the 
best educational advantages. Mary Institute is justly 
the pride of the city. 

The School of Botany, which is endowed and has 
its own laboratory, workshop, and working library, 
was. of course, the outgrowth of the Shaw Botanical 
Garden: it has usually from twenty to thirty special 
students. 

The School of Fine Arts, which was reorofanized 



^'^. Zoui's a}id Ju7?isas Cifi/. 335 

under the University in 1S70, has enrolled over -200 
students, and gives a TS'ide and eareful training in all 
the departments of drawing, painting, and modelling, 
Tvith instructions in anatomy, perspective, and compo- 
sition, and has life classes for both sexes, in drawing 
from draped and nude figures. Its lecture, working 
rooms, and galleries of paintings and casts are in its 
Crow Art ^luseura — a beautiful building, well planned 
and justly distinguished for architectural excellence. 
It ranks among the best Art buildings in the country. 
The Manual Training School has been in operation 
since ISSO. It may be called the most fully developed 
pioneer institution of the sort. I spent some time in 
its workshops and schools, thinking of the very inter- 
esting question at the bottom of the experiment, name- 
ly, the mental development involved in the training of 
the hand and the eye, and the reflex help to manual 
skill in the purely intellectual training of study. It is, 
it may be said again, not the purpose of the modern 
manual training to teach a trade, but to teach the use 
of tools as an aid in the symmetrical development of 
the human being. The students here certainly do beau- 
tiful work in wood-turning and simple carving, in iron- 
work and forging. They enjoy the work ; they are 
alert and interested in it. I am certain that thev are 
the more interested in it in seeing how they can work 
out and apply what they have learned in books, and I 
doubt not they take hold of literary study more fresh- 
ly for this manual training in exactness. The school 
exacts close and thoughtful study with tools as well as 
in books, and I can believe that it gives dignity in the 
opinion of the working student to hand labor. The 
school is large, its ixraduvites have been oronerallv sue- 



336 South and West 

cessf ul in practical pursuits and in teaching, and it has 
demonstrated in itself the correctness of the theory of 
its authors, that intellectual drill and manual training 
are mutually advantageous together. Whether man- 
ual training shall be a part of all district school edu- 
cation is a question involving many considerations that 
do not enter into the practicability of this school, but 
I have no doubt that manual training schools of this 
sort would be immensely useful in every city. There 
are many boys in every community who cannot in any 
other way be awakened to any real study. This train- 
ing school deserves a chapter by itself, and as I have 
no space for details, I take the liberty of referring those 
interested to a volume on its aims and methods by Dr. 
C. M.Woodward, its director. 

Kotwithstanding the excellence of the public-school 
system of St. Louis, there is no other city in the 
country, except Xew Orleans, where so large a propor- 
tion of the youths are being educated outside the 
public schools. A very considerable portion of the 
population is Catholic. There are forty-four parochi- 
al schools, attended by nineteen thousand pupils, and 
over a dozen different Sisterhoods are ensjag^ed in 
teaching in them. Generally each parochial school 
has two departments — one for boys and one for girls. 
They are sustained entirely by the parishes. In these 
schools, as in the two Catholic universities, the prom- 
inence of ethical and reli<Tfious traininor is to be noted. 

o o 

Seven- eighths of the schools are in charge of thor- 
oughly trained religious teachers. Many of the boys' 
schools are taught by Christian Brotliers. The girls 
are almost invariably taught by members of religious 
Sisterhoods. In most of the German schools the 



St. Louis and Kansas City. 337 

girls and smaller boys are tanglit by Sisters, the 
larger boys by lay teachers. Some reports of school 
attendance are given in the Catholic Directory : SS. 
Peter and Paul's (German), 1300 pupils ; St. Joseph's 
(German), 957 ; St. Bridget's, 950; St. Malachy's, 16Q ; 
St. John's, TOO ; St. Patrick's, TOO. There is a school 
for colored children of 150 pupils taught by colored 
Sisters. 

In addition to these parochial schools there are a 
dozen academies and convents of higher education for 
young ladies, all under charge of Catholic Sister- 
hoods, commonly with a mixed attendance of board- 
ers and day scholars, and some of them with a repu- 
tation for learning that attracts pupils from other 
States, notably the Academy of the Sacred Heart, St. 
Joseph's Academy, and the Academy of the Visita- 
tion, in charge of cloistered nuns of that order. Be- 
sides these, in connection with various reformatory 
and charitable institutions, such as the House of the 
Good Shepherd and St. Mary's Orphan Asylum, there 
are industrial schools in charge of the Sisterhoods, 
where girls receive, in addition to their education, 
training in some industry to maintain themselves re- 
spectably when they leave their temporary homes. 
Statistics are wanting, but it will be readily inferred 
from these statements that there are in the city a 
great number of single women devoted for life, and 
by special religious and intellectual training, to the 
office of teaching. 

For the higher education of Catholic young men 
the city is distinguished by two remarkable institu- 
tions. The one is the old St. Louis University, and 
the other is the Christian Brothers' College. The 
22 



338 South and West 

•latter, wliicli a few years ago outgrew its old build- 
ings iu the city, lias a lino pile of buildings at Cote 
Brillante, on a commanding site about five miles out, 
with ample grounds, and in the neighborhood of the 
great parks and the Botanical Garden. The charac- 
ter of the school is indicated by the motto on the 
fagade of the building — Eellglo, JTores, Cultura. 
The institution is designed to accommodate a thou- 
sand boarding students. The present attendance is 
450, about half of whom are boarders, and represent 
twenty States. There is a corps of thirty -five pro- 
fessors, and three courses of study are maintained — 
the classical, the scientific, and the commercial. As 
several of the best parochial schools are in charge of 
Christian Brothers, these schools are feeders of the 
college, and the pupils have the advantage of an un- 
broken system with a consistent purpose from the 
day they enter into the primary department till they 
graduate at the college. The order has, at Gleucoe, a 
laro-e Xormal School for the training^ of teachers. 
The fame and success of the Christian Brothers as ed- 
ucators in elementary and the higher education, in Eu- 
rope and the United States, is largely due to the fact 
that they labor as a unit in a system that never varies 
in its methods of imparting instruction, in which the 
exponents of it have all undergone the same peda- 
gogic training, in which there is no room for the per- 
sonal fancy of the teacher in correction, discipline, or 
scholarship, for everything is judiciously governed by 
prescribed modes of procedure, founded on long ex- 
perience, and exemplified in the co-operative plan of 
the Brothers. In vindication of the exceptional skill 
acquired by its teachers in the thorougli drill of the 



St. Louis and Ka/nsas City. 339 

order, the Brotherhood points to the success of its 
graduates in competitive examinations for public em- 
ployment in this country and in Europe, and to the 
commendation its educational exhibits received, at 
London and New Orleans. 

The St. Louis University, founded in 1829 by mem- 
bers of the Society of Jesus, and chartered in 1834, is 
officered and. controlled by the Jesuit Fathers. It is 
an unendowed institution, depending upon fees paid 
for tuition. Before the war its students were large- 
ly the children of Southern planters, and its graduates 
are found all over the South and South-west ; and 
up to 1881 the pupils boarded and lodged within the 
precincts of the old buildings on the comer of Ninth 
Street and Washington, where for over half a cen- 
tury the school has vigorously flourished. The place, 
which is now sold and about to be used for business 
purposes, has a certain flavor of antique scholarship, 
and the quaint buildings keep in mind the plain but 
rather pleasing architecture of the French period. 
The University is in process of removal to the new 
buildings on Grand Avenue, which are a conspicuous 
ornament to one of the most attractive parts of the 
city. Soon nothing will be left of the institution on 
Ninth Street except the old college church, which is 
still a favorite place of worship for the Catholics of 
the city. The new buildings, in the early decorated 
English Gothic style, are ample and imposing ; they 
have a front of 270 feet, and the northern wing ex- 
tends 325 feet westward from the avenue. The li- 
brary, probably the finest room of the kind in the 
West, is sixty-seven feet high, amply lighted, and pro- 
vided with three balconies. The library, which was 



3-iO South and ^Vest. 

packed for removal, has over 25,000 volumes, is said 
to contain many rare and interesting books, and to 
fairly represent science and literature. Besides this, 
there are special libraries, open to students, of over 
0000 volumes. The museum of the new building is a 
noble hall, one hundred feet by sixty feet, and fifty- 
two feet high, without columns, and lighted from 
above and from the side. The University has a valu- 
able collection of ores and minerals, and other objects 
of nature and art that will be deposited in this hall, 
which will also serve as a picture-gallery for the 
many paintings of historical interest. Philosophical 
apparatus, a chemical laboratory, and an astronomical 
observatory are the equipments on the scientific side. 
The University has now no dormitories and no board- 
ers. There are twenty -five 2:)rofessors and instruct- 
ors. The entire course, including the preparatory, is 
seven years, A glance at the catalogue shows that 
in the curriculum the institution keeps pace with the 
demands of the age. Besides the preparatory course 
(S9 pupils), it has a classical course (143 pupils), an 
English course (82 pupils), and 85 post-graduate stu- 
dents, makmg a total of 399. Its students form so- 
cieties for various purposes ; one, the Sodality of the 
Blessed Virgin Mary, with distinct organizations in 
the senior and junior classes, is for the promotion of 
piety and the practice of devotion towards the Blessed 
Virgin ; another is for training in public speaking 
and philosophic and literary disputation ; there is 
also a scientific academy, to foster a taste for scien- 
tific culture ; and there is a student's library of 4000 
volumes, independent of the religious books of the 
Sodality societies. 



St Louis and Kansas City. 3il 

In a conversation with the president I learned that 
the prevailing idea in the courses of study is the grad- 
ual and healthy development of the mind. The class- 
es are carefully graded. The classics arc favorite 
branches, but mental philosophy, chemistry, physics, 
astronomy, are taught with a view to practical appli- 
cation. Much stress is laid upon mathematics. Dur- 
ing the whole course of seven years, one hour cacli 
day is devoted to this branch. In short, I was im- 
pressed with the fact that this is an institution for 
mental training. Still more was I struck with the 
prominence in the whole course of ethical and religious 
culture. On assembling every morning, all the Catho- 
lic students hear mass. In every class in every year 
Christian doctrine has as prominent a place as any 
branch of study; beginning in the elementary class 
with the small catechism and practical instructions in 
the manner of reciting the ordinary prayers, it goes 
on through the whole range of doctrine — creed, evi- 
dences, ritual, ceremonial, mysteries — in the minutest 
details of theory and practice ; ingraining, so far as 
repeated instruction can, the Catholic faith and pure 
moral conduct in the character, involving instructions 
as to what occasions and what amusements are dan- 
gerous to a good life, on the reading of good books 
and the avoiding bad books and bad company. 

In the post-graduate course, lectures are given and 
examinations made in ethics, psychology, anthropol- 
ogy, biology, and physics ; and in the published ab- 
stracts of lectures for the past two years I find that 
none of the subjects of modern doubt and speculation 
are ignored — spiritism, psychical research, the cell the- 
ory, the idea of God, socialism, agnosticism, the Noach- 



34:2 South and West. 

ian deluge, theories of government, fundamental no- 
tions of i^hysical science, unity of the human species, 
potency of matter, and so on. During the past fifty 
j^ears this faculty has contained many men famous as 
pulpit orators and missionaries, and this course of 
lectures on philosophic and scientific subjects has 
brought it prominently before the cultivated inhabi- 
tants of the town. 

Another educational institution of note in St. Louis 
is the Concordia Seminar of the Old Lutheran, or the 
Evangelical Lutheran Church. This denomination, 
Avhich originated in Saxony, and has a large member- 
ship in our Western States, adheres strictly to the 
Augsburg Confession, and is distinguished from the 
general Lutheran Church by greater strictness of doc- 
trine and practice, or, as may be said, by a return to 
primitive Lutheranism ; that is to say, it grounds 
itself upon the literal inspiration of the Scriptures, 
upon salvation by faith alone, and upon individual 
liberty. This Seminar is one of several related insti- 
tutions in the Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and other 
States : there is a college at Fort AYayne, Indiana, a 
Progymnasiura at Milwaukee, a Seminar of practical 
theology at Springfield, Illinois, and this Seminar at 
St. Louis, which is wholly devoted to theoretical theol- 
ogy. This Church numbers, I believe, about 200,000 
members. 

The Concordia Seminar is housed in a large, com- 
modious building, effectively set upon high ground in 
the southern part of the city. It was erected and the 
institution is sustained by the contributions of the 
congregations. The interior, roomy, light, and com- 
modious, is plain to barrenness, and has a certain mo- 



8L Loitis and Kansas City. 343 

uastic severity, which is matched by the discipline and 
the fare. In visiting it one takes a step backward into 
the atmosphere and theology of the sixteenth cen- 
tury. The ministers of the denomination are distin- 
guished for learning and earnest simplicity. The 
president, a very able man, only thirty-five years of 
age, is at least two centuries old in his opinions, and 
wholly undisturbed by any of the doubts which have 
agitated the Christian world since the Reformation, 
lie holds the faith "once for all " delivered to the 
saints. The Seminar has a hundred students. It is 
requisite to admission, said the president, that they 
be perfect Latin, Greek, and Hebrew scholars. A 
large proportion of the lectures are given in Latin, 
the remainder in German and English, and Latin is 
current in the institution, although German is the 
familiar speech. The course of study is exacting, the 
rules are rigid, and the discipline severe. Social in- 
tercourse with the other sex is discouraged. The j^ur- 
suit of love and learning are considered incompatible 
at the same time ; and if a student were inconsiderate 
enough to become engaged, he would be expelled. 
Each student from abroad may select or be selected 
by a family in the communion, at whose house he may 
visit once a v/eek, which attends to his washing, and 
supplies to a certain extent the place of a home. The 
young men are trained in the highest scholarship and 
the strictest code of morals. I know of no other de- 
nomination which holds its members to such primitive 
theology and such strictness of life. Individual liber- 
ty and responsibility are stoutly asserted, without any 
latitude in belief. It repudiates Prohibition as an in- 
fringement of personal liberty, would make the use of 



344 South and West. 

wine or beer depend upon the individual conscience, 
but no member of the communion would be permitted 
to sell intoxicating liquors, or to go to a beer-garden 
or a tlieatre. In regard to the sacrament of commun- 
ion, there is no authority for altering the plain direc- 
tions in the Scripture, and communion without wine, 
or the substitution of any concoction for wine, w^ould 
be a sin. No member would be permitted to join any 
labor union or secret society. The sacrament of com- 
munion is a mystery. It is neither transubstantiation 
nor consubstantiation. The president, whose use of 
English in subtle distinctions is limited, resorted to 
Latin and German in explanation of the mystery, but 
left the question of real and actual presence, of spirit and 
substance, still a matter of terms ; one can only say that 
neither the ordinary Protestant nor the Catholic inter- 
pretation is accepted. Conversion is not by any act or 
ability of man ; salvation is by faith alone. As the 
verbal inspiration of the Scriptures is insisted on in 
all cases, the world was actually created in six days 
of twenty-four hours each. When I asked the presi- 
dent w^hat he did with geology, he smiled and simply 
waved his hand. This communion has thirteen flour- 
ishing churches in the city. In a town so largely 
German, and with so many freethinkers as well as 
free-livers, I cannot but consider this strict sect, of a 
simple unquestioning faith and high moral demands, 
of the highest importance in the future of the city. 
But one encounters with surprise, in our modern life, 
this revival of the sixteenth century, which plants 
itself so squarely against so much that we call " prog- 
ress." 

As to the institutions of charity, I must content my- 



St. Louis and Kansas City. 345 

self with saying that they are many, and worthy of a 
great and enlightened city. There are of all denomi- 
nations 211 churches ; of these the Catholics lead with 
47 ; the Presbyterians come next with 24 ; and the 
Baptists have 22 ; the Methodists North, 4 ; and the 
Methodists South, 8. The most interesting edifices, 
both for associations and architecture, are the old 
Cathedral; the old Christ Church (Ej^iscopalian), 
excellent Gothic ; and an exquisite edifice, the Church 
of the Messiah (Unitarian), in Locust Street. 

The city has two excellent libraries. The Public 
Library, an adjunct of the public-school system, in 
the Polytechnic Building, has an annual appropriation 
of about 814,000 from the School Board, and receives 
about $5000 more from membership and other sources. 
It contains about 67,000 volumes, and is admirably 
managed. The Mercantile Library is in process of 
removal into a magnificent six-story building on 
Broadway and Locust Street. It is a solid and im- 
posing structure, the first story of red granite, and 
the others of brick and terra-cotta. The library and 
reading-rooms are on the fifth story, the rest of the 
building is rented. This association, which is forty- 
two years old, has 3500 members, and had an income 
in 1887 of 8120,000, nearly all from membership. In 
January, 1888, it had 68,732 volumes, and in a circu- 
lation of over 168,000 in the year, it had the unparal- 
leled distinction of reducing the fiction given out to 
41.95 per cent. Both these libraries have many 
treasures interesting to a book -lover, and though 
neither is free, the liberal, intelligent management of 
each has been such as to make it a most beneficent 
institution for the city. 



346 South and West. 

There are many handsome and stately buildings in 
the city, the recent erections showing growth in 
wealth and taste. The Chamber of Commerce, w^hich 
is conspicuous for solid elegance, cost a million and 
a half dollars. There are 3295 members of the Mer- 
chants' Exchange. The Court-house, with its noble 
dome, is as well proportioned a building as can be 
found in the country. A good deal may be said for 
the size and effect of the Exposition Building, which 
covers what was once a pretty park at the foot of 
Lucas Place, and cost $750,000. There are clubs 
many and flourishing. The St. Louis Club (social) 
has the finest building, an exceedingly tasteful piece 
of Romanesque architecture on Twenty-ninth Street. 
The University Club, which is like its namesake in 
other cities, has a charming old-fashioned house and 
grounds on Pine Street. The Commercial Club, an 
brganization limited in its membership to sixty, has 
no club-house, but, like its namesake in Chicago, is a 
controlling influence in the prosperity of the city. 
Representing all the leading occupations, it is a body 
of men who, by character, intellect, and wealth, can 
carry through any project for the public good, and 
which is animated by the highest public spirit. 

Of the social life of the town one is permitted to 
speak only in general terms. It has many elements 
to make it delightful — long use in social civilities, in- 
terest in letters and in education, the cultivation of 
travel, traditions, and the refinement of intellectual 
pursuits. The to^vn has no academy of music, but 
there is a good deal of musical feeling and cultiva- 
tion ; there is a very good orchestra, one of the very 
best choruses in the country, and Verdi's " Requiem " 



St. Louis and Kansas City. 347 

was recently given splendidly. I am told by men and 
women of rare and special cultivation that the city is 
a most satisfactory one to live in, and certainly to the 
stranger its society is charming. The city has, how- 
ever, the Mississippi Valley climate — extreme heat in 
the summer, and trying winters. 

There is no more interesting industrial establish- 
ment in the West than the plate-glass works at Crys- 
tal City, thirty miles south on the river. It w^as built 
up after repeated failures and reverses — for the busi- 
ness, like any other, had to be learned. The plant is 
very extensive, the buildings are of the best, the ma- 
chinery is that most approved, and the whole repre- 
sents a cash investment of $1,500,000. The location 
of the works at this point was determined by the ex- 
istence of a mountain of sand which is quarried out 
like rock, and is the finest and cleanest silica known 
in the country. The production is confined entirely 
to plate-glass, which is cast in great slabs, twelve feet 
by twelve and a half in size, each of which weighs, 
before it is reduced half in thickness by grinding, 
smoothing, and polishing, about V50 pounds. The 
product for 1887 was 1,200,000 feet. The coal used 
in the furnaces is converted into gas, which is found 
to be the most economical and most easily regulat- 
ed fuel. This industry has drawn together a popu- 
lation of about 1500. I was interested to learn that 
labor in the production of this glass is paid twice 
as much as similar labor in England, and from three 
to four times as much as similar labor in France 
and Belgium. As the materials used in making 
plate-glass are inexpensive, the main cost, after the 
plant, is in labor. Since plate-glass was first made 



3i8 South and West. 

in this country, eighteen years ago, the price of 
it in the foreign market has been continually forced 
down, until now it costs the American consumer only 
half what it cost him before, and the jobber gets it at 
an average cost of To cents a foot, as against the $1.50 
a foot w^hich we paid the foreign manufacturer be- 
fore the establishment of American factories. And in 
these eighteen years the Government has had from 
this source a revenue of over seventeen millions, at an 
average duty, on all sizes, of less than 59 per cent. 

Missouri is one of the greatest of our States in re- 
sources and in promise, and it is conspicuous in the 
West for its variety and capacity of interesting devel- 
opment. The northern portion rivals low^a in beauti- 
ful rolling prairie, wath high divides and park-like 
forests ; its water communication is unsurpassed ; its 
mineral resources are immense ; it has noble mountains 
as well as fine uplands and fertile valleys, and it never 
impresses the traveller as monotonous. So attractive 
is it in both scenery and resources that it seems un- 
accountable that so many settlers have passed it by. 
But, first slavery, and then a rural population disin- 
clined to change, have stayed its development. This 
state of things, however, is changing, has changed 
marvellously within a few years in the northern por- 
tion, in the iron regions, and especially in larger cit- 
ies of the west, St. Joseph and Kansas City. The 
State deserves a study by itself, for it is on the way 
to be a great empire of most varied interests. I can 
only mention here one indication of its moral prog- 
ress. It has adopted a high license and local option 
law. Under this the saloons are closed in nearly all 



St. Loids and Kansas City. 349 

the smaller villages and country towns. A shaded 
map shows more than three-fourths of the area of the 
State, including three-fifths of the population, free 
from liquor-selling. The county court may grant a 
license to sell liquor to a person of good moral char- 
acter on the signed petition of a majority of the tax- 
paying citizens of a township or of a city block ; it 
must grant it on the petition of two-thirds of the citi- 
zens. Thus positive action is required to establish a 
saloon. On the map there are 76 white counties free 
of saloons, 14 counties in which there are from one to 
three saloons only, and 24 shaded counties which have 
altogether 22G3 saloons, of which 1450 are in St. Louis 
and 520 in Kansas City. The revenue from the 
saloons in St. Louis is about 8800,000, in Kansas City 
about $375,000, annually. The heavily shaded portions 
of the map are on the great rivers. 

Of all the wonderful towns in the West, none has 
attracted more attention in the East than Kansas City. 
I think I am not wrong in saying that it is largely 
the product of Eastern energy and capital, and that its 
closest relations have been with Boston. I doubt if 
ever a new towm was from the start built up so solid- 
ly or has grown more substantially. The situation, at 
the point where the Missouri River makes a sharp 
bend to the east, and the Kansas River enters it, was 
long ago pointed out as the natural centre of a great 
trade. Long before it started on its present career 
it was the great receiving and distributing point of 
South-western commerce, which left the Missouri Riv- 
er at this point for Santa Fe and other trading marts 
in the South-west. Aside from this river advantage, 
if one studies the course of streams and the incline of 



350 South and West, 

the land in a wide circle to the westward, he is im- 
pressed with the fact that the natural business drain- 
age of a vast area is Kansas City. The city was 
therefore not fortuitously located, and when the rail- 
ways centred there, they obeyed an inevitable law. 
Here nature intended, in the development of the coun- 
try, a great city. Where the next one will be in the 
South-west is not likely to be determined until the Ind- 
ian Territory is open to settlement. To the north, 
Omaha, with reference to Nebraska and the West, pos- 
sesses many similar advantages, and is likewise grow- 
ing with great vigor and solidity. Its situation on a 
slope rising from the river is commanding and beauti- 
ful, and its splendid business houses, handsome private 
residences, and fine public schools give ample evi- 
dence of the intelligent enterprise that is directing its 
rapid growth. 

It is difficult to analyze the impression Kansas City 
first makes upon the Eastern stranger. It is usually that 
of immense movement, much of it crude, all of it full 
of purpose. At the Union Station, at the time of the 
arrival and departure of trains, the whole world seems 
afloat ; one is in the midst of a continental movement 
of most varied populations. I remember that the first 
time I saw it in passing, the detail that most impress- 
ed me was the racks and rows of baggage checks ; it 
did not seem to me that the whole travelling world 
could need so many. At that time a drive through 
the city revealed a chaos of enterprise — deep cuts for 
streets, cable roads in process of construction over the 
sharp ridges, new buildings, hills shaved down, houses 
perched high up on slashed knolls, streets swarming 
with traffic and roaring with speculation. A little 



St. Louis and Kansas City. 351 

more than a year later the change towards order was 
marvellous : the cable roads were running in all direc- 
tions ; gigantic buildings rising upon enormous blocks 
of stone gave distinction to the principal streets ; the 
great residence avenues have been beautified, and 
showed all over the hills stately and picturesque 
houses. And it is worthy of remark that while the 
" boom " of speculation in lots had subsided, there 
was no slacking in building, and the reports showed a 
steady increase in legitimate business. I was confirm- 
ed in my theory that a city is likely to be most at- 
tractive when it has had to struggle heroically against 
natural obstacles in the building. 

I am not going to describe the city. The reader 
knows that it lies south of the river Missouri, at the 
bend, and that the notable portion of it is built upon 
a series of sharp hills. The hill portion is already a 
beautiful city ; the flat part, which contains the rail- 
way depot and yards, a considerable portion of the 
manufactories and wholesale houses, and much refuse 
and squatting population (white and black), is unat- 
tractive in a high degree. The Kaw, or Kansas, River 
would seem to be the natural western boundary, but 
it is not the boundary ; the city and State line runs 
at some distance east of Kansas River, leaving a con- 
siderable portion of low ground in Kansas City, Kan- 
sas, which contains the larger number of the great 
packing-houses and the great stock-yards. This iden- 
tity of names is confusing. Kansas City (Kansas), 
Wyandotte, Armourdale, Armstrong, and Riverview 
(all in the State of Kansas) have been recently con- 
solidated under the name of Kansas City, Kansas. It 
is to be regretted that this thriving town of Kansas, 



352 South and West, 

^vliich already claims a population of 40,000, did not 
take the name of Wyandotte. In its boundaries are 
the second largest stock-yards in the country, which 
received last year 670,000 cattle, nearly 2,500,000 
hogs, and 210,000 sheep, estimated worth 851,000,000. 
There also are half a dozen large packing-houses, one 
of them ranking Avith the biggest in the countr}', 
which last year slaughtered 195,933 cattle, and 1,907,- 
164 hogs. The great elevated railway, a wonderful 
structure, which connects Kansas City, Missouri, with 
Wyandotte, is owned and managed by men of Kan- 
sas City, Kansas. The city in Kansas has a great 
area of level ground for the accommodation of manu- 
facturing enterprises, and I noticed a good deal of 
speculative feeling in regard to this territory. The 
Kansas side has fine elevated situations for residences, 
but Wyandotte itself does not compare in attractive- 
ness with the Missouri city, and I fancy that the con- 
trolling impetus and capital will long remain with the 
cit}^ that has so much the start. 

Looking about for the specialty which I have learn- 
ed to expect in every great Western city, I was struck 
by the number of warehouses for the sale of agricult- 
ural implements on the flats, and I was told that 
Kansas City excels all others in the amount of sales of 
farming implements. The sale is put down at 815,- 
000,000 for the year 1887 — a fourth of the entire 
reported product manufactured in the United States. 
Looking for the explanation of this, one largely ac- 
counts for the growth of Kansas City, namely, the 
vast rich agricultural regions to the west and south- 
west, the development of Missouri itself, and the fa- 
cilities of distribution. It is a general belief that 



St. Loxiis and Kansas City. 353 

settlement is gradually pushing the rainy belt farther 
and farther westward over the prairies and plains, 
that the breaking up of the sod by the plough and 
the tilling have increased evaporation and consequent- 
ly rainfall. I find this questioned by competent ob- 
servers, who say that the observation of ten years is 
not enough to settle the fact of a change of climate, 
and that, as not a tenth part of the area under consid- 
eration has been broken by the plough, there is not 
cause enough for the alleged effect, and that we do 
not yet know the cycle of years of drought and years 
of rain. However this may be, there is no doubt of 
the vast agricultural yield of these new States and 
Territories, nor of the quantities of improved machin- 
ery they use. As to facility of distribution, the rail- 
ways arc in evidence. I need not name them, but I 
believe I counted fifteen lines and systems centring 
there. In 1887, 4565 miles of railway were added to 
the facilities of Kansas City, stretching out in every 
direction. The development of one is notable as pe- 
culiar and far-sighted, tlie Fort Scott and Gulf, which 
is grasping the ICast as well as the South-west; turn- 
ing eastward from Fort Scott, it already reaches the 
iron industries of Birmingham, pushes on to Atlanta, 
and seeks the seaboard. I do not think I over-estimate 
the importance of this quite direct connection of Kan- 
sas City with the Atlantic. 

The population of Kansas City, according to the 
statistics of the Board of Trade, increased from 41,- 
786 in 1877 to 165,924 in 1887, the assessed valuation 
from $9,370,287 in 1877 to $53,017,290 in 1887, and 
the rate of taxation was reduced in the same period 
from about 22 mills to 14. I notice also that the 
23 



354 South and West. 

banking capital increased in a year — 1886 to 1887 — 
from $3,873,000 to 86,950,000, and the Clearing-bouse 
transactions in the same year from 8251,963,441 to 
$353,895,458. This, with other figures which might 
be given, sustains the assertion that while real-estate 
speculation has decreased in the current year, there 
was a substantial increase of business. During the 
year ending June 30, 1886, there were built 4054 new 
houses, costing $10,393,207 ; during the year ending 
June 30, 1887, 5889, costing $12,839,868. An impor- 
tant feature of the business of Kansas City is in the 
investment and loan and trust companies, which are 
many, and aggregate a capital of 87,773,000. Loans 
are made on farms in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, 
and Iowa, and also for city improvements. 

Details of business might be multiplied, but enough 
have been given to illustrate the material prosperity 
of the city. I might add a note of the enterprise 
which last year paved (mainly with cedar blocks on 
concrete) thirteen miles of the city; the very hand- 
some churches in process of erection, and one or two 
(of the many) already built, admirable in plan and 
appearance; the really magnificent building of the 
Board of Trade — a palace, in fact; and other hand- 
some, costly structures on every hand. There are 
thirty-five miles of cable road. I am not sure but 
these cable roads are the most interesting — certainly 
the most exciting — feature of the city to a stranger. 
They climb such steeps, they plunge down such grades, 
they penetrate and whiz through such crowded, lively 
thoroughfares, their trains go so rapidly, that the 
rider is in a perpetual exhilaration. I know no other 
locomotion more exciting and agreeable. Life seems 



St. Louis and Kansas City. 355 

a sort of holiday when one whizzes through the crowd- 
ed city, up and down and around amid the tall build- 
ings, and then launches off in any direction into the 
suburbs, which are alive with new buildings. Inde- 
pendence Avenue is shown as one of the finest avenues, 
and very handsome it and that part of the town are, 
but I fancied I could detect a movement of fashion 
and preference to the hills southward. 

In the midst of such a material expansion one has 
learned to expect fine houses, but I was surprised to 
find three very good book-stores (as I remember, St. 
Louis has not one so good), and a very good start for 
a public library, consisting of about 16,000 well- 
arranged and classified books. Members pay 82 a 
year, and the library receives only about $2500 a year 
from the city. The citizens could make no better- 
paying investment than to raise this library to the first 
rank. There is also the beginning of an art school in 
some pretty rooms, furnished with casts and auto- 
types, where pupils practise drawing under direction 
of local artiste. , There are two social clubs — the Uni- 
versity, which occupies pleasant apartments, and the 
Kansas City Club, which has just erected a handsome 
club-house. In these respects, and in a hundred re- 
finements of living, the town, which has so largely 
drawn its young, enterprising population from the ex- 
treme East, has little the appearance of a frontier 
place; it is the push, the public spirit, the mixture of 
fashion and slouching negligence in street attire, the 
mingling of Eastern smartness with border emancipa- 
tion in manner, and the general restlessness of move- 
ment, that proclaim the newness. It seems to me that 
the incessant stir, and especially the clatter, whir, 



350 South and West. 

and rapidity of the cable cars, must have a decided 
effect on the nerves of the T\^hole population. The 
appearance is certainly that of an entire population 
incessantly in motion. 

I have spoken of the public spirit. i>csidos the 
Board of Trade there is a Merchants' and Manufactur- 
ers' Bureau, which works vigorously to bring to the 
city and establish mercantile and manufacturing en- 
terprises. The same spirit is shown in the public 
schools. The expenditures in 1887 were, for school 
purposes, 8226,923; for interest on bonds, $18,408; for 
grounds and buildings, 8110,087; in all, 8355,418. 
The total of children of school age was, white, 31,- 
667; colored, 4204. Of these in attendance at school 
were, white, 12,933 ; colored, 1975. There were 25 
school-houses and 212 teachers. The schools which I 
saw — one large grammar-school, a colored school, and 
the High-school of over 600 pupils — were good all 
through, full of intelligent emulation, the teachers 
alert and well equipped, and the attention to litera- 
ture, to the science of government, to what, in short, 
goes to make intelligent citizens, highly commend- 
able. I find the annual reports, under Prof. J. M. 
Greenwood, most interesting reading. Topics are 
taken up and investigations made of great public in- 
terest. These topics relate to the even physical and 
mental development of the young in distinction from 
the effort merely to stuff them v,dth information. 
There is a most intelligent attempt to remedy defect- 
ive eyesight. Twenty per cent, of school children 
have some anomaly of refraction or accommodation 
which should be recognized and corrected early; girls 
have a larger per cent, of anomalies than boys. Irish, 



SL Louis and Kansas City. 357 

Swedish, and German children have the highest per- 
centage of affections of the eyes; English, French, 
Scotch, and Americans the lowest. Scientific obser- 
vations of the eyes are made in the Kansas City 
schools, with a view to remedy defects. Another 
curious topic is the investigation of the Contents of 
Children's Minds — that is, what very small children 
know about common things. Prof. Stanley Hall pub- 
lished recently the result of examinations made of 
very little folks in Boston schools. Professor Green- 
wood made similar investigations among the lowest 
grade of pupils in the Kansas City schools, and a table 
of comparisons is printed. The per cent, of children 
ignorant of common things is astonishingly less in 
Kansas City schools than in the Boston; even the col- 
ored children of the Western city made a much bet- 
ter showing. Another subject of investigation is the 
alleged physical deterioration in this country. Ex- 
aminations w^ere made of hundreds of school children 
from the age of ten to fifteen, and comparisons taken 
with the tables in Mulhall's "Dictionary of Statistics," 
London, 1884. It turns out that the Kansas City chil- 
dren are taller, taking sex into account, than the aver- 
age English child at the age of either ten or fifteen, 
weigh a fraction less at ten, but upwards of four 
pounds more at fifteen, while the average Belgian boy 
and girl compare favorably vath American children 
two years younger. The tabulated statistics show two 
facts, that the average Kansas child stands fully as 
tall as the tallest, and that in weight he tips the beam 
against an older child on the other side of the Atlantic. 
With this showing, we trust that our American ex- 
periment will be permitted to go on. 



358 South and Wc^t. 

In roacbing the necessary limit of a paper too short 
for its subject. I can only express my admiration of 
the indomitable energy and spirit of that portion of 
the West which Kansas City represents, and congrat- 
ulate it upon so many indications of attention to the 
hiirher civilization, without which its material pros- 
perity will be wonderful but not attractive. 



XV. 
KENTUCKY. 

All Kentucky, like Ga\i\, is divided into three parts. 
This division, which may not be sustained by the ge- 
ologists or the geographers, perhaps not even by the 
ethnok~>gists, is, in my mind, one of character: the east 
and south-east mountainous part, the central blue-grass 
region, and the great western portion, thrifty in both 
agriculture and manufactures. It is a great self- 
sustaining empire, lying midway in the Union, and 
between the North and the South (never having yet 
exacth' made up its mind Avhether it is North or 
South), extending over more than seven degrees of 
longitude. Its greatest length east and west is 410 
miles; its greatest breadth, ITS miles. Its area by 
latest surveys, and larger than formerly estimated, is 
42,283 square miles. AVithin this area prodigal nature 
has brought together nearly everything that a highly 
civilized society needs : the most fertile soil, capable 
of producing almost every variety of product for food 
or for textile fabrics; mountains of coals and iron ores 
and limestone; streams and springs everywhere; al- 
most all sorts of hard-wood timber in abundance. 
Nearly half the State is still virgin forest of the no- 
blest trees, oaks, sugar-maple, ash, poplar, black-wal- 
nut, linn, elm, hickory, beech, chestnut, red cedar. 
The climate may honestly be called temperate : its 
inhabitants do not need to live in cellars in the sum- 



360 South and JVcst. 

mer, nor burn up their fences anJ furniture in the 
winter. 

Kentucky is loved of its rivers. It can be seen by 
their excessively zigzag courses how reluctant they are 
to leave the State, and if they do leave it they are 
certain to return. The Kentucky and the Green 
Avander about in the most uncertain way before they 
go to the Ohio, and the Licking and Big Sandy exhibit 
only a little less reluctance. The Cumberland, after 
a wide detour in Tennessee, returns ; and Powell's 
River, joining the Clinch and entering the Tennessee, 
finally persuades that river, after it has looked about 
the State of Tennessee and gladdened northern Ala- 
bama, to return to Kentucky. 

Kentucky is an old State, with an old civilization. 
It was the pioneer in the great western movement of 
population after the Revolution. Although it was 
first explored in 1770, and the Boone trail through the 
wilderness of Cumberland Gap was not marked till 
1775, a settlement had been made in Frankfort in 
1774, and in 1790 the Territory had a population of 
T3,677. This was a marvellous growth, considering 
the isolation by hundreds of miles of wilderness from 
Eastern communities, and the savage opposition of the 
Indians, who slew fifteen hundred white settlers from 
1783 to 1790. Kentucky was the home of no Indian 
tribe, but it was the favorite hunting and fighting 
ground of those north of the Ohio and south of the 
Cumberland, and they united to resent white inter- 
ference. "When the State came into the Union in 1792 
— the second admitted — it was the equal in population 
and agricultural wealth of some of the original States 
that had been settled a hundred and fifty years, and 



Kentuchj. 361 

in 1800 could boast 220,T59 inhabitants, and in 1810, 
406,511. 

At the time of the settlement, New York west of 
the Hudson, western Pennsylyania, and western Vir- 
ginia were ahnost unoccupied except by hostile Ind- 
ians; there was only chance and dangerous navigation 
down the Ohio from Pittsburg, and it was nearly 
eight hundred miles of a vrilderness road, which was 
nothing but a bridle-path, from Philadelphia by way 
of the Cumberland Gap to central Kentucky. The 
majority of emigrants came this toilsome way, which 
was, after all, preferable to the river route, and all 
passengers and produce went that way eastward, for 
the steamboat had not yet made the ascent of the 
Ohio feasible. In 1779 Virginia resolved to construct 
a wagon-road through the wilderness, but no road was 
made for many years afterwards, and indeed no vehicle 
of any sort passed over it till a road was built by ac- 
tion of the Kentucky Legislature in 1796. I hope it 
was better then than the portion of it I travelled from 
Pinevillc to the Gap in 1888. 

Civilization made a great leap over nearl}^ a thou- 
sand miles into the open garden-spot of central Ken- 
tucky, and the exploit is a unique chapter in our 
frontier development. Either no other land ever lent 
itself so easily to civilization as the blue-grass region, 
or it w\as exceptionally fortunate in its occupants. 
They formed almost immediately a society distin- 
guished for its amenities, for its political influence, 
prosperous beyond precedent in farming, venturesome 
and active in trade, developing large manufactures, 
especially from hemp, of such articles as could be 
transported by river, and sending annually through 



362 South and WeM. 

the wilderness road to the East and South immense 
droves of eattle, horses, and swine. In the tirst neces- 
sity, and the best indication of superior civilization, 
good roads for transportation, Kentucky was conspic- 
uous in comparison with the rest of the country. As 
early as lS'2-3 macadam roads were projected, the turn- 
pike from Lexington to Maysville on the Ohio was 
built in lS-29, and the work went on by State and 
county co-openition until the central region had a 
system of splendid roads, unexcelled in any part of 
the Union. In 1S30 one of the earliest railways in the 
United States, that from Lexington to Frankfort, was 
begun; two years later seven miles were constructed, 
and in ISoo the tirst locomotive and train of cars ran 
on it to Frankfort, twenty-seven miles, in two hours 
and twenty-nine minutes. The structure was com- 
posed of stone sills, in which grooves were cut to 
receive the iron bars. These stone blocks can still bo 
seen along the line of the Toad, now a part of the 
Louisville and Nashville system. In all internal im- 
provements the State was very energetic. The canal 
around the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville was opened 
in 1831, with some aid from the General Government. 
The State expended a great deal in improving the 
navigation of the Kentucky, the Green, and other 
rivers in its borders by an expensive system of locks 
and dams; in ISoT it paid 61i^.o00 to engineer engaged 
in turnpike and river improvement, and in 1S39 631,- 
675 for the same purpose. 

The story of early Kentucky reads like a romance. 
By IS'JO it counted a population of over 510,000, and 
still it had scarcely wagon-road communication with, 
the East. Here was a singular phenomenon, a pros- 



Kentuclcy. 3G3 

porous coramunity, as ono might say a garden in llic 
wilderness, separated by natural barriers from the 
great life of the East, which pushed out north of it a 
connected, continuous development; a community al- 
most self-sustaining, having for his centre the loveli- 
est agricultural region in the Union, and evolving a 
unique social state so gracious and attractive that it 
was thought necessary to call in the effect of tlie blue- 
grass to explain it, unaided human nature being in- 
adequate, it was thought, to such a result. Almost 
from the beginning line houses attested the taste and 
prosperity of the settlers ; by 1792 the blue-grass re- 
gion was dotted with neat and commodious dwellings, 
fruit orchards and gardens, sugar groves, and clusters 
of villages; while, a little later, rose, in the midst of 
broad plantations and park-like forests, lands luxuriant 
with wheat and clover and corn and hemp and tobacco, 
the manorial dwellings of the colonial period, like the 
stately homes planted by the Holland Land Company 
along the Hudson and the Mohawk and in the fair 
Genesee, like the pillared structures on the .Tames and 
the Staunton, and like the solid square mansions of 
old New England. A type of some of them stands in 
Frankfort now, a house which was planned hy Thomas 
Jefferson and built in 1700, spacious, permanent, ele- 
gant in the low relief of its chaste ornamentation. 
For comfort, for the purposes of hospitality, for the 
quiet and rest of the mind, there is still nothing so 
good as the colonial house, with the slight modilica- 
tions required by our changed conditions. 

From 1820 onward the State grew by a natural in- 
crement of population, but without much aid from 
native or foreign emigration. In 1860 its population 



364: South and West 

Avas only about 919,000 whites, with some 225,000 
slaves and over 10,000 free colored persons. It had 
no city of the first class, nor any villages specially 
thriving. Louisville numbered only about 68,000, Lex- 
ington less than 15,000, and Frankfort, the capital, a 
little over 5000. It retained the lead in hemp and a 
leading position in tobacco ; but it had fallen away 
behind its much younger rivals in manufactures and 
the building of railways, and only feeble efforts had 
been made in the development of its extraordinary 
mineral resources. 

How is this arrest of development accounted for? 
I know that a short way of accounting for it has been 
the presence of slavery. I would not underestimate 
this. Free labor would not go where it had to com- 
pete with slave labor; vrhite labor now does not like 
to come into relations with black labor; and capital 
also was shy of investment in a State where both po- 
litical economy and social life were disturbed by a 
color line. But this does not wholly account for the 
position of Kentucky as to development at the close 
of the war. So attractive is the State in most respects, 
in climate, soil, and the possibilities of great wealth 
by manufactures, that I doubt not the State would 
have been forced into the line of Western progress 
and slavery become an unimportant factor long ago, 
but for certain natural obstacles and artificial influ- 
ences. 

Let the reader look on the map, at the ranges of 
mountains running from the north-east to the south- 
west — the Blue Ridge, the AUeghanies, the Cumber- 
land, and Pine mountains, continuous rocky ridges, 
with scarcely a water gap, and only at long intervals 



KentiicJcy, 3G5 

a passable mountain gap — and notice how these would 
both hinder and dellect the tide of emigration. With 
such barriers the early development of Kentucky be- 
comes ten times a wonder. But about 1S25 an event 
occurred that placed her at a greater disadvantage iu 
the competition. The Erie Canal was opened. This 
made New York, and not Virginia, the great com- 
mercial highway. The railway development followed. 
It was easy to build roads north of Kentucky, and the 
tide of settlement followed the roads, which were 
mostly aided by land grants; and in order to utilize 
the land grants the railways stimulated emigration by 
extensive advertising. Capital and population passed 
Kentucky by on the north. To the south somewhat 
similar conditions prevailed. Comparatively cheap 
roads could be built along the eastern slope of the 
AUeghanies, following the great valley from Penn- 
sylvania to Alabama ; and these south-westwardly 
roads were also aided by the General Government. 
The Korth and South Railway of Alabama, and the 
Alabama and Great Southern^ which cross at Birmipg- 
ham, wore land-grant roads. The roads which left the 
Atlantic seaboard passed naturally northward and 
southward of Kentucky, and left an immense area in 
the centre of the Union — all of western and south- 
western Virginia and eastern Kentucky — without 
transportation facilities. Until ISSO here was the 
largest area east of the Mississippi unpenetrated by 
railways. 

The war removed one obstacle to the free movement 
of men desiring work and seeking agreeable homes, 
a movement marked in the great increase of the in- 
dustrial population of Louisville and the awakening to 



366 South and West. 

varied industries and trade in western Kentucky. The 
offer of cheap land, which would reward skilful farm- 
ing in agreeable climatic conditions, has attracted 
foreign settlers to the plateau south of the blue-grass 
region ; and scientific investigation has made the 
mountain district in the south-east the object of the 
eager competition of both domestic and foreign cap- 
ital. Kentucky, therefore, is entering upon a new era 
of development. Two phases of it, the Swiss colonies, 
and the opening of the coal, iron, and timber resources, 
present special points of interest. 

This incoming of the commercial spirit will change 
Kentucky for the better and for the worse, will change 
even the tone of the blue-grass country, and perhaps 
take away something of that charm about which so 
much has been written. So thoroughly has this region 
been set forth by the pen and the pencil and the lens 
that I am relieved of the necessity of describing it. 
But I must confess that all I had read of it, all the 
pictures I had seen, gave me an inadequate idea of its 
beauty and richness. So far as I know, there is noth- 
ing like it in the world. Comparison of it with Eng- 
land is often made in the use of the words "garden" 
and "park." The landscape is as unlike the finer 
parts of Old England as it is unlike the most carefully 
tended parts of New England. It has neither the in- 
tense green, the subdivisions in hedges, the bosky lanes, 
the picturesque cottages, the niceness of minute garden- 
culture, of England, nor the broken, mixed lawn gar- 
dening and neglected pastures and highways, with the 
sweet wild hills, of the Berkshire region. It is an 
open, elevated, rolling land, giving the traveller often 
the most extended views over wheat and clover, hemp 



Kentucky, 367 

and tobacco fields, forests and blue-grass pastures. One 
may drive for a hundred miles north and south over 
the splendid macadam turnpikes, behind blooded road- 
sters, at an easy ten-mile gait, and see always the same 
sight — a smiling agricultural paradise, with scarcely 
a foot, in fence corners, by the road-side, or in low 
grounds, of uncultivated, uncared-for land. The open 
country is more pleasing than the small villages, which 
have not the tidiness of the New England small vil- 
lages; the houses are for the most part plain; here and 
there is a negro cabin, or a cluster of them, apt to be 
unsightly, but always in view somewhere is a planta- 
tion-house, more or less pretentious, generally old-fash- 
ioned and with the colonial charm. These are fre- 
quently off the main thoroughfare, approached by a 
private road winding through oaks and ash-trees, 
seated on some gentle knoll or slope, maybe wdth a 
small llower-garden, but probably with the old sen- 
timental blooms that smell good and have reminis- 
cences, in the midst of weaving fields of grain, blue- 
grass pastures, and open forest glades w^atered by a 
clear stream. There seems to be infinite peace in a 
house so surrounded. The house may have pillars, 
probably a colonial porch and door-way with carving 
in bass-relief, a wide hall, large square rooms, low 
studded, and a general air of comfort. What is new 
in it in the way of art, furniture, or bric-a-brac may 
not be in the best taste, and may " swear " at the old 
furniture and the delightful old portraits. For almost .^ 
ahvays will be found some portraits of the post-Revolu- 
tionary period, having a traditional and family inter- 
est, by Copley or Jouett, perhaps a Stuart, maybe by 
some artist who evidently did not paint for fame, 



368 South and West. 

which carry the observer back to the colonial socie- 
ty in Virginia, Philadelphia, and New York. In a 
country house and in Lexington I saw portraits, life- 
size and miniature, of Rebecca Gratz, whose loveliness 
of person and character is still a tender recollection of 
persons living. She was a great beauty and toast in 
her day. It was at her house in Philadelphia, a centre 
of wit and gayety, that Washington Irving and Henry 
Brevoort and Gulian C. Verplanck often visited. She 
shone not less in New York society, and was the most 
intimate friend of Matilda Hoffman, who was betrothed 
to Irving; indeed, it was in her arms that Matilda died, 
fadeless always to us as she was to Irving, in the love- 
liness of her eighteenth year. The well-founded tra- 
dition is that Irving, on his first visit to Abbotsford, 
told Scott of his own loss, and made him acquainted 
with the beauty and grace of Rebecca Gratz, and that 
Scott, wanting at the moment to vindicate a race that 
was aspersed, used her as a model for Rebecca in 
"Ivanhoe." 

One distinction of the blue-grass region is the 
forests, largely of gigantic oaks, free of all under- 
grovv^th, carpeted with the close-set, luscious, nutritive 
blue-grass, which remains green all the season when 
it is cropped by feeding. The blue-grass thrives else- 
where, notably in the upper Shenandoah Valley, where 
somewhat similar limestone conditions prevail ; but 
this is its natural habitat. On all this elevated rolling 
plateau the limestone is near the surface. This grass 
blooms towards the middle of June in a bluish, almost 
a peacock blue, blossom, which gives to the fields an 
exquisite hue. By the end of the month the seed 
ripens into a yellowish color, and while the grass is 



Kentucky. 369 

still green and lush underneath, the surface presents 
much the appearance of a high New England pasture 
in August. When it is ripe, the top is cut for the seed. 
The limestone and the blue-grass together determine 
the agricultural pre-eminence of the region, and account 
for the fine breeding of the horses, the excellence of 
the cattle, the stature of the men, and the beauty of 
the women; but they have social and moral influence 
also. It could not well be otherwise, considering the re- 
lation of the physical condition to disposition and char- 
acter. We should be surprised if a rich agricultural 
region, healthful at the same time, where there is abun- 
dance of food, and wholesome cooking is the rule, did 
not affect the tone of social life. And I am almost 
prepared to go further, and think that blue-grass is a 
specific for physical beauty and a certain graciousness 
of life. I have been told that there is a natural rela- 
tion between Presbyterianism and blue-grass, and am 
pointed to the Shenandoah and to Kentucky as evi- 
dence of it. Perhaps Presbyterians naturally seek a 
limestone country. But the relation, if it exists, is too 
subtle and the facts are too few to build a theory on. 
Still, I have no doubt there is a distinct variety of 
woman known as the blue-grass girl. A geologist 
told me that once when he was footing it over the 
State with a geologist from another State, as they ap- 
proached the blue-grass region from the southward 
they were carefully examining the rock formation and 
studying the surface indications, which are usually 
marked on the border line, to determine exactly where 
the peculiar limestone formation began. Indications, 
however, were wanting. Suddenly my geologist look- 
ed up the road and exclaimed : 
24 



370 South and West 

" "VYe are in the blue-grass region now." 

" How do you know?" asked the other. 

" Why, there is a blue-grass girl." 

There was no mistaking the neat dress, the style, 
the rounded contours, the gracious personage. A few 
steps farther on the geologists found the outcropping 
of the blue limestone. 

Perhaps the people of this region are trying to live 
up to the thorough-bred. A pedigree is a necessity. 
The horse is of the first consideration, and either has 
or gives a sort of social distinction; first, the running 
horse, the thorough-bred, and now the trotting horse, 
which is beginning to have a recognizable descent, 
and is on the way to be a thorough-bred. Many of 
the finest plantations are horse farms; one might call 
them the feature of the country. Horse-raising is 
here a science, and as we drive from one estate to 
another, and note the careful tillage, the trim fences, 
the neat stables, the pretty paddocks, and the houses 
of the favorites, we see how everj^thing is intended to 
contribute to the perfection in refinement of fibre, 
speed, and endurance of the noble animal. Even per- 
sons who are usually indifferent to horses cannot but 
admire these beautiful high-bred creatures, either the 
famous ones displayed at the stables, or the colts and 
fillies, which have yet their reputations to make, at 
play in the blue-grass pastures; and the pleasure one 
experiences is a refined one in harmony with the land- 
scape. Usually horse-dealing carries with it a lower- 
ing of the moral tone, which we quite understand 
when we say of a man that he is " horsy." I suppose 
the truth is that man has degraded the idea of the 
horse by his own evil passions, using him to gamble 



Kentucky. 371 

and cheat with. Now, the visitor will find little of 
these degrading associations in the blue-grass region. 
It is an orthodox and a moral region. The best and 
most successful horse-breeders have nothing to do 
with racing or betting. The yearly product of their 
farms is sold at auction, without reserve or favor. 
The sole business is the production of the best animals 
that science and care can breed. Undeniably where the 
horse is of such importance he is much in the thought, 
and the use of " horsy " phrases in ordinary conversa- 
tion shows his effect upon the vocabulary. The re- 
cital of pedigree at the stables, as horse after horse is 
led out, sounds a little like a chapter from the Book 
of Genesis, and naturally this Biblical formula gets 
into a conversation about people. 

And after the horses there is whiskey. There are 
many distilleries in this part of the country, and a 
great deal of whiskey is made. I am not defending 
whiskey, at least any that is less than thirty years old 
and has attained a medicinal quality. But I want to 
express my opinion that this is as temperate as any 
region in the United States. There is a wide-spread 
strict temperance sentiment, and even prohibition pre- 
vails to a considerable degree. Whiskey is made and 
stored, and mostly shipped away; rightly or wrongly, 
it is regarded as a legitimate business, like wheat- 
raising, and is conducted by honorable men. I believe 
this to be the truth, and that drunkenness does not 
prevail in the neighborhood of the distilleries, nor did I 
see anywhere in the country evidence of a habit of dram 
drinking, of the traditional matter-of-course offering of 
whiskey as a hospitality. It is true that mint grows 
in Kentucky, and that there are persons who would 



372 South and West 

Tvin the respect of a tide-water Virginian in the con- 
coction of a julep. And no doubt in the mind of the 
born Kentuckian there is a rooted belief that if a per- 
son needed a stimulant, the best he can take is old 
hand -made whiskey. \Yhere the manufacture of 
whiskey is the source of so much revenue, and is 
carried on with decorum, of course the public senti- 
ment about it differs from that of a community that 
makes its money in raising potatoes for starch. Where 
the horse is so beautiful, fleet, and profitable, of course 
there is intense interest in him, and the general public 
take a lively pleasure in the races; but if the reader has 
been accustomed to associate this part of Kentucky 
with horse-racing and drinking as prominent character- 
istics, he must revise his opinion. 

Perhaps certain colonial habits lingered longer in 
Kentucky than elsewhere. Travellers have spoken 
about the habit of profanity and gambling, especially 
the game of poker. In the West generally profane 
swearing is not as bad form as it is in the East. But 
whatever distinction central Kentucky had in pro- 
fanity or poker, it has evidently lost it. The duel 
lingered long, and prompt revenge for insults, espe- 
cially to women. The blue-grass region has " histo- 
ries " — beauty has been fought about; women have 
had careers ; families have run out through dissipation. 
One may hear stories of this sort even in the Berk- 
shire Hills, in any place where there have been long 
settlement, wealth, and time for the development of 
family and personal eccentricities. And there is still 
a flavor left in Kentucky; there is still a subtle differ- 
ence in its social tone; the intelligent women are at- 
tractive in another way from the intelligent New 



Kentucky. 373 

England women — they have a charm of their own. 
May Heaven long postpone the day when, by the 
commercial spirit and trade and education, we shall all 
be alike in all parts of the Union ! Yet it would be 
no disadvantage to anybody if the graciousness, the 
simplicity of manner, the refined hospitality, of the 
blue-grass region should spread beyond the blue lime- 
stone of the Lower Silurian. 

In the excellent State Museum at Frankfort, under 
the charge of Prof. John R. Procter,* who is State 
Geologist and also Director of the Bureau of Immigra- 
tion, in addition to the admirable exhibit of the natu- 
ral resources of Kentucky, are photographs, statistics, 
and products showing the condition of the Swiss and 
other foreign farming colonies recently established in 
the State, which were so interesting and offered so 
many instructive points that I determined to see some 
of the colonies. 

This museum and the geological department, the 
intelligent management of which has been of immense 
service to the commonwealth, is in one of the detach- 
ed buildings which make up the present Capitol. The 
Capitol is altogether antiquated, and not a credit to 
the State. The room in which the Lower House 
meets is shabby and mean, yet I noticed that it is 
fairly well lighted by side windows, and debate can 
be heard in it conducted in an ordinary tone of voice. 
Kentucky will before many years be accommodated 



* Whatever value this paper has is so largely due to Pro- 
fessor Procter that I desire to make to him the most explicit 
acknowledgments. One of the very best results of the war 
was keeping him in the Union. 



374 South and West. 

with new State buildings more suited to her wealth 
and dignity. But I should like to repeat what was 
said in relation to the Capitol of Arkansas. Why 
cannot our architects devise a capitol suited to the 
wants of those who occupy it ? Why must we go on 
making these huge inconvenient structures, mainly 
for external display, in which the legislative Chambers 
are vast air-tight and water-tight compartments, com- 
monly completely surrounded by other rooms and 
lobbies, and lighted only from the roof, or at best b}' 
high windows in one or two sides that permit no out- 
look — rooms difficult to speak or hear in, impossible 
to ventilate, needing always artificial light ? Why 
should the Senators of the United States be compelled 
to occupy a gilded dungeon, unlighted ever by the 
sun, un visited ever by the free wind of heaven, in 
which the air is so foul that the Senators sicken? 
What sort of legislation ought we to expect from 
such Chambers ? It is perfectly feasible to build a 
legislative room cheerful and light, open freely to sun 
and air on three sides. In order to do this it may be 
necessary to build a group of connected buildings, 
instead of the parallelogram or square, which is most- 
ly domed, with gigantic halls and stair-ways, and, con- 
sidering the purpose for which it is intended, is a libel 
on our ingenuity and a burlesque on our civilization. 
Kentuck}^ has gone to work in a very sensible way 
to induce immigration and to attract settlers of the 
right sort. The Bureau of Immigration was estab- 
lished in 1880. It began to publish facts about the 
State, in regard to the geologic formation, the soils, 
the price of lands, both the uncleared and the lands 
injured by slovenly culture, the kind and amount of 



Kentucky. ' 375 

products that might be expected by thrifty farming, 
and the climate ; not exaggerated general proclama- 
tions promising sudden wealth with little labor, but 
facts such as would attract the attention of men willing 
to work in order to obtain for themselves and their 
children comfortable homes and modest independence. 
Invitations were made for a thorough examination 
of lands — of the different sorts of soils in different 
counties — before purchase and settlement. The lead- 
ing idea was to induce industrious farmers who were 
poor, or had not money enough to purchase high- 
priced improved lands, to settle upon lands that the 
majority of Kentuckians considered scarcely worth 
cultivating, and the belief was that good farming 
would show that these neglected lands were capable 
of becoming very productive. Eight years' experi- 
ence has fully justified all these expectations. Colo- 
nies of Swiss, Germans, Austrians, have come, and 
Swedes also, and these have attracted many from the 
North and North-west. In this period I suppose as 
many as ten thousand immigrants of this class, thrifty 
cultivators of the soil, have come into tlie State, many 
'f whom are scattered about the State, unconnected 
with the so-called colonies. These colonies are not 
organized communities in any way separated from the 
general inhabitants of the State. They have merely 
settled together for companionship and social reasons, 
where a sufficiently large tract of cheap land was 
found to accommodate them. Each family owns its 
own farm, and is perfectly independent. An indis- 
criminate immigration has not been desired or encour- 
aged, but the better class of laboring agriculturists, 
grape-growers, and stock-raisers. There are several 



37C South and West 

settlements of tliesc, cliiclly Swiss, dairy-farmers, 
cheese-makers, and vine-growers, in Laurel County ; 
others in Lincoln County, composed of Swiss, Ger- 
mans, and Austrians ; a mixed colony in Rock Castio 
County ; a thriving settlement of Austrians in I>oylo 
County ; a temperance colony of Scandinavians in 
Edmonson County ; another Scandinavian colony in 
Grayson County ; and scattered settlements of Ger- 
mans and Scandinavians in Christian County. Tliese 
settlements have from one hundred to over a thou- 
sand inhabitants each. The lands in Laurel and Lin- 
coln counties, Avhich I travelled through, are on a 
high plateau, with good air and temperate climate, 
but Avith a somewdiat thin, loamy, and sandy soil, 
needing manure, and called generally in the State 
poor land — poor certainly compared with the blue- 
grass region and other extraordinarily fertile sections. 
These farms, •which had been more or less run over 
by Kentucky farming, were sold at from one to five 
dollars an acre. They are farms that a man cannot 
live on in idleness. But they respond well to thrifty 
tillage, and it is a sight worth a long journey to see 
the beautiful farms these Swiss have made out of land 
that the average Kentuckian thought not worth cul- 
tivating. It has not been done without hard work, 
and as most of the immigrants were poor, many of 
them have had a hard struggle in building comfort- 
able houses, reducing the neglected land to order, and 
obtaining stoclc. A great attraction to the Swiss was 
that this land is adapted to vine culture, and a rea- 
sonable profit was expected from selling grapes and 
making wine. The vineyards are still young; exper- 
iment has not yet settled what kind of grapes flourish 



Kentucky. 377 

best, but many vine-growers have realized liandsome 
profits in the sale of fruit, and the trial is sufficient to 
show that good wine can be produced. The only in- 
terference thus far with the grapes has been the un- 
precedented late freeze last spring. 

At the recent exposition in Louisville the exhibit of 
these Swiss colonies — the photographs showing the 
appearance of the unkempt land when they bought 
it, and the fertile fields of grain and meadow and 
vineyards afterwards, and the neat, plain farm cot- 
tages, the pretty Swiss chalet with its attendants of 
intelligent comely girls in native costumes offering 
articles illustrating the taste and the thrift of the col- 
onies, wood-carving, the products of the dairy, and 
the fruit of the vine — attracted great attention. 

I cannot better convey to the reader the impression 
I wish to in regard to this colonization and its lesson 
for the country at large than by speaking more in 
detail of one of the Swiss settlements in Laurel County. 
This is Bernstadt, about six miles from Pittsburg, on 
the Louisville and Nashville road, a coal-mining re- 
gion, and offering a good market for the produce of 
the Swiss farmers. We did not need to be told when 
we entered the colony lands ; neater houses, thrifty 
farming, and better roads proclaimed it. It is not a 
garden-spot ; in some respects it is a poor-looking 
country ; but it has abundant timber, good water, 
good air, a soil of light sandy loam, which is produc- 
tive under good tillage. There are here, I suppose, 
some two hundred and fifty families, scattered about 
over a large area, each on its farm. There is no col- 
lection of houses ; the church (Lutheran), the school- 
house, the store, the post-office, the hotel, are widely 



378 South and West. 

separated ; for the hotel-keeper, the store-keeper, the 
postmaster,- and, I believe, the school-master and the 
parson, are all farmers to a greater or less extent. It 
must be understood that it is a primitive settlement, 
having as yet very little that is picturesque, a commu- 
nity of simple working-people. Only one or two of 
the houses have any pretension to taste in architecture, 
but this will come in time — the vine-clad porches, the 
quaint gables, the home-likeness. The Kentuckian, 
however, will notice the barns for the stock, and a 
general thriftiness about the places. And the appear- 
ance of the farms is an object-lesson of the highest 
value. 

The chief interest to me, however, was the character 
of the settlers. Most of them were poor, used to hard 
work and scant returns for it in Switzerland. What 
they have accomplished, therefore, is the result of 
industry, and not of capital. There are among the 
colonists skilled laborers in other things than vine- 
growing and cheese-making — watch-makers and wood- 
carvers and adepts in various trades. The thrifty 
young farmer at whose pretty house we spent the 
night, and who has saw-mills at Pittsburg, is of one of 
the best Swiss families; his father was for many years 
President of the republic, and he was a graduate of 
the university at Lucerne. There were others of the 
best blood and breeding and schooling, and men of 
scientific attainments. But they are all at work close 
to the soil. As a rule, however, the colonists were 
men and women of small means at home. The notable 
thing is that they bring with them a certain old civil- 
ization, a unity of simplicity of life with real refine- 
ment, courtesy, politeness, good-humor. The girls 



Kentucky. 379 

would not be above going out to service, and they 
would not lose their self-respect in it. Many of them 
would be described as " peasants," but I saw some, not 
above the labors of the house and farm, with real 
grace and dignity of manner and charm of conversa- 
tion. Few of them as yet speak any English, but in 
most houses are evidences of some German culture. 
Uniformly there was courtesy and frank hospitality. 
The community amuses itself rationally. It has a 
very good brass band, a singing club, and in the even- 
ings and holidays it is apt to assemble at the hotel and 
take a little wine and sing the songs of father-land. 
The hotel is indeed at present without accommoda- 
tions for lodgers — nothing but a Wirthshaus, with a 
German garden where dancing may take place now 
and then. With all the hard labor, they have an idea 
of the simple comforts and enjoyments of life. And 
they live very well, tliough plainly. At a house where 
we dined, in the colony Strasburg, near Bernstadt, we 
had an excellent dinner, well served, and including 
delicious soup. If the colony never did anything else 
than teach that part of the State how to make soup, 
its existence would be justified. Here, in short, is an 
element of homely thrift, civilization on a rational 
basis, good-citizenship, very desirable in any State. 
May their vineyards flourish ! When we departed 
early in the morning — it was not yet seven — a dozen 
Switzers, fresh from the dewy fields, in their working 
dresses, had assembled at the hotel, where the young 
landlady also smiled a welcome, to send us oif with a 
song, Avhich ended, as we drove away, in a good-bye 
yodel. 

A line drawn from the junction of the Scioto River 



380 South and West. 

with the Ohio south-west to a point in the southern 
boundary about thirty miles east of where the Cum- 
berland leaves the State defines the eastern coal-meas- 
ures of Kentucky. In area it is about a quarter of the 
State — a region of plateaus, mountains, narrow val- 
leys, cut in all directions by clear, rapid streams, stuff- 
ed, one may say, with coals, streaked with iron, 
abounding in limestone, and covered with superb for- 
ests. Independent of other States a most remarkable 
region, but considered in its relation to the coals and 
iron ores of West Virginia, western Virginia, and east- 
ern Tennessee, it becomes one of the most important 
and interesting regions in the Union. Looking to the 
south-eastern border, I hazard nothing in saying that 
the country from the Breaks of Sandy down to Big 
Creek Gap (in the Cumberland Mountain), in Tennes- 
see, is on the eve of an astonishing development — one 
that will revolutionize eastern Kentucky, and power- 
fully affect the iron and coal markets of the country. 
It is a region that appeals as well to the imagination 
of the traveller as to the capitalist. My personal ob- 
servation of it extends only to the portion from Cum- 
berland Gap to Big Stone Gap, and the head-waters 
of the Cumberland between Cumberland Mountain 
and Pine Mountain, but I saw enough to comprehend 
why eager purchasers are buying the forests and the 
mining rights, why great companies, American and 
English, are planting themselves there and laying 
the foundations of cities, and why the gigantic rail- 
way corjjorations are straining every nerve to pene- 
trate the mineral and forest heart of the region. A 
dozen roads, projected and in i^rogress, are pointed 
towards this centre. It is a race for the prize. The 



Kentucky. 381 

Louisville and Nashville, running through soft-coal 
fields to Jellico and on to Knoxville, branches from 
Corbin to Barboursville (an old and thriving town) 
and to Pineville. From Pineville it is under contract, 
thirteen miles, to Cumberland Gap. This gap is be- 
ing tunnelled (work going on at both ends) by an in- 
dependent company, the tunnel to be open to all 
roads. The Louisville and Nashville may run up 
the south side of the Cumberland rano^e to Bi<y Stone 
Gap, or it may ascend the Cumberland River and its 
Clover Fork, and pass over to Big Stone Gap that 
way, or it may do both. A road is building from 
Knoxville to Cumberland Gap, and from Johnson City 
to Big Stone Gap. A road is running from Bristol to 
within twenty miles of Big Stone Gap; another road 
nears the same place — the extension of the Norfolk 
and Western — from Pocahontas down the Clinch Riv- 
er. From the north-west many roads are projected to 
pierce the great deposits of coking and cannel coals, 
and find or bore a way through the mountain ridges 
into south-western Virginia. One of these, the Ken- 
tucky Union, starting from Lexington (which is be- 
coming a great railroad centre), has reached Clay City, 
and will soon be open to the Three Forks of the Ken- 
tucky River, and on to Jackson, in Breathitt County. 
These valley and transridge roads will bring within 
short hauling distance of each other as great a variety 
of iron ores of high and low grade, and of coals, cok- 
ing and other, as can be found anywhere — according 
to the official reports, greater than anywhere else 
within the same radius. As an item it may be men- 
tioned that the rich, pure, magnetic iron ore used in 
the manufacture of Bessemer steel, found in East 



382 South and West. 

Tennessee and North Carolina, and developed in great- 
est abundance at Cranberry Forge, is within one hun- 
dred miles of the superior Kentucky coking coal. 
This contiguity (a contiguity of coke, ore, and lime- 
stone) in this region points to the manufacture ot 
Bessemer steel here at less cost than it is now else- 
where made. 

It is unnecessary that I should go into details as to 
the ore and coal deposits of this region : the official 
reports are accessible. It may be said, however, that 
the reports of the Geological Survey as to both coal 
and iron have been recently perfectly confirmed by 
the digging of experts. Aside from the coal-measures 
below the sandstone, there have been found above the 
sandstone, north of Pine Mountain, 1650 feet of coal- 
measures, containing nine beds of coal of workable 
thickness, and between Pine and Cumberland mount- 
ains there is a greater thickness of coal-measures, 
containing twelve or more workable beds. Some of 
these are coking coals of great excellence. Cannel- 
coals are found in sixteen of the counties in the east- 
ern coal-fields. Two of them at least are of unexampled 
richness and purity. The value of a cannel-coal is de- 
termined by its volatile combustible matter. V>j this 
test some of the Kentucky cannel-coal excels the most 
celebrated coals of Great Britain. An analysis of a 
cannel-coal in Breathitt County gives 66.28 of volatile 
combustible matter ; the highest in Great Britain is 
the Boghead, Scotland, 51.60 per cent. This beauti- 
ful cannel-coal has been brought out in small quantities 
ma the Kentucky River; it will have a market all 
over the country when the railways reach it. The 
first coal identified as coking was named the Elkhorn, 



Kenticchy. ' 383 

from the stream where it was found in Pike County. 
A thick bed of it has been traced over an area of 1600 
square miles, covering several counties, -but attaining 
its greatest thickness in Letcher, Pike, and Harlan. 
This discovery of coking coal adds greatly to the 
value of the iron ores in north-eastern Kentucky, and 
in the Red and Kentucky valleys, and also of the great 
deposits of ore on the south-east boundary, along the 
western base of the Cumberland, along the slope of 
Powell's Mountain, and also along Wallin's Ridge, 
three parallel lines, convenient to the coking coal in 
Kentucky. This is the Clinton or red fossil ore, 
stratified, having from 45 to 54 per cent, of metallic 
iron. Recently has been found on the north side of 
Pine Mountain in Kentucky, a third deposit of rich 
" brown " ore, averaging 52 per cent, of metallic iron. 
This is the same as the celebrated brown ore used in 
the furnaces at Clifton Forge; it makes a very tough 
iron. I saw a vein of it on Straight Creek, three 
miles north of Pineville, just opened, at least eight 
feet thick. 

The railway to Pineville follows the old Wilder- 
ness I'oad, the trail of Boone and the stage-road, 
along which are seen the ancient tavern stands where 
the jolly story-telling travellers of fifty years ago were 
entertained and the droves of horses and cattle were 
fed. The railway has been stopped a mile west of 
Pineville by a belligerent property owner, who sits 
there with his Winchester rifle, and will not let the 
work go on until the courts compel him. The railway 
will not cross the Cumberland at Pineville, but higher 
up, near the great elbow. There was no bridge over 
the stream, and we crossed at a very rough and rocky 



384 South and West 

wagon-ford. Pineville, where there has long been a 
backwoods settlement on the south bend of the river 
just after it breaks through Pine Mountain, is now the 
centre of a good deal of mining excitement and real- 
estate speculation. It has about five hundred inhabi- 
tants, and a temporary addition of land buyers, mineral 
experts, engineers, furnace projectors, and railway con- 
tractors. There is not level ground for a large city, but 
what there is is plotted out for sale. The abundant iron 
ore, coal, and timber here predict for it a future of 
some importance. It has already a smart new hotel, 
and business buildings, and churches are in process of 
erection. The society of the town had gathered for 
the evening at the hotel. A wandering one-eyed 
fiddler was providentially present who could sing and 
play " The Arkansas Traveller " and other tunes that 
lift the heels of the young, and also accompany the 
scream of the violin with the droning bagpipe notes 
of the mouth-harmonica. The star of the gay com- 
pany was a graduate of Annapolis, in full evening 
dress uniform, a native boy of the valley, and his vis- 
a-vis was a heavy man in a long linen duster and car- 
pet slippers, with a palm-leaf fan, who crashed 
through the cotillon with good effect. It was a pleas- 
ant party, and long after it had dispersed, the trou- 
badour, sitting on the piazza, wiled away sleep by the 
break-downs, jigs, and songs of the frontier. 

Pineville and its vicinity have many attractions; 
the streams are clear, rapid, rocky, the foliage abun- 
dant, the hills picturesque. Straight Creek, which 
comes in along the north base of Pine Mountain, is 
an exceedingly picturesque stream, having along its 
banks fertile little stretches of level ground, while the 



Kentucky. 385 

gentle bordering hills are excellent for grass, fruit 
orchards, and vineyards. The walnut-trees have been 
culled out, but there is abundance of oak, beech, 
poplar, cucumber, and small pines. And there is no 
doubt about the mineral wealth. 

We drove from Pineville to Cumberland Gap, 
thirteen miles, over the now neglected Wilderness 
road, the two mules of the wagon unable to pull us 
faster than two miles an hour. The road had every 
variety of badness conceivable — loose stones, ledges 
of rock, bowlders, sloughs, holes, mud, sand, deep 
fords. We crossed and followed up Clear Creek (a 
muddy stream) over Log Mountain (full of coal) to 
Canon Creek. Settlements were few — only occasional 
poor shanties. Climbing over another ridge,we reached 
the Yellow Creek Valley, through which the Yellow 
Creek meanders in sand. This whole valley, lying 
very prettily among the mountains, has a bad name 
for " difficulties." The hills about, on the sides and 
tops of which are ragged little farms, and the valley 
itself, still contain some lawless people. We looked 
■svith some interest at the Turner house, where a sheriff 
was killed a year ago, at a place where a "severe" 
man fired into a wagon-load of people and shot a 
woman, and at other places where in recent times dif- 
ferences of opinion had been settled by the revolver. 
This sort of thing is, however, practically over. This 
valley, close to Cumberland Gap, is the site of the 
great city, already plotted, which the English company 
are to build as soon as the tunnel is completed. It is 
called Middleborough, and the streets are being graded 
and preparations made for building furnaces. The 
north side of Cumberland Mountain, like the south 
25 



386 South and ^Yest 

side of Pine, is a conglomerate, covered with superb 
oak and chestnut trees. We climbed up to the mount- 
ain over a winding road of ledges, bowlders, and deep 
gullies, rising to an extended pleasing prospect of 
mountains and valleys. The pass has a historic in- 
terest, not only as the ancient highway, but as the 
path of armies in the Civil War. It is narrow, a deep 
road between overhanging rocks. It is easily de- 
fended. A light bridge thrown over the road, leading 
to rifle-pits and breastworks on the north side, remains 
to attest the warlike occupation. Above, on the bald 
highest rocky head on the north, guns were planted 
to command the pass. Two or three houses, a black- 
smith's shop, a drinking tavern, behind which on the 
rocks four men were playing old sledge, made up the 
sum of its human attractions as we saw it. Just here 
in the pass Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia touch 
each other. Virginia inserts a narrow wedge between 
the other two. On our Avay down the wild and pict- 
uresque road Ave crossed the State of Virginia and 
went to the new English hotel in Tennessee. We 
passed a magnificent spring, which sends a torrent of 
water into the valley, and turns a great millwheel — a 
picture in its green setting — saw the opening of the 
tunnel with its shops and machinery, noted the few 
houses and company stores of the new settlement, 
climbed the hill to the pretty hotel, and sat down on 
the piazza to look at the scene. The view is a strik- 
ing one. The valley through which the Powell River 
runs is pleasant, and the bold, bare mountain of rock 
at the right of the pass is a noble feature in tlie land- 
scape. With what joy must the early wilderness pil- 
grims have hailed this landmark, this gate-way to the 



Kentucky. 387 

Paradise beyond the mountains ! Some miles north 
in the range are the White Rocks, gleaming in the 
sun and conspicuous from afar, the first signal to the 
weary travellers from the east of the region they 
sought. Cumberland Gap is full of expectation, and 
only awaits the completion of the tunnel to enter upon 
its development. Here railways from the north, 
south, and west are expected to meet, and in the Yel- 
low Creek Valley beyond, the English are to build a 
great manufacturing city. The valleys and sides of 
these mountain ranges (which have a uniform eleva- 
tion of not much more than 2000 to 2500 feet) enjoy 
a delightful climate, moderate in the winter and tem- 
perate in the summer. This Avhole region, when it is 
accessible by rail, v/ill be attractive to tourists. 

We pursued our journey up the Powell River Val- 
ley, along the base of the Cumberland, on horseback 
— one day in a wagon in this country ought to satisfy 
anybody. The roads, however, are better on this side 
of the mountain; all through Lee County, in Virginia, 
in spots very good. This is a very fine valley, with 
good water, cold and clear, growing in abundance oats 
and corn, a constant succession of pretty views. We 
dined excellently at a neat farm-house on the river, 
and slept at the house of a very prosperous farmer 
near Boon's Path post-office. Here we are abreast 
the White Rocks, the highest point of the Cumber- 
land (3451 feet), that used to be the beacon of immi- 
gration. The valley grows more and more beautiful 
as we go up, full fields of wheat, corn, oats, friendly 
to fruit of all sorts, with abundance of walnut, oak, 
and chestnut timber — a fertile, agreeable valley, settled 
with well-to-do farmers. The next morning, beauti- 



388 South and West. 

fully clear and sparkling, we were off at seven o'clock 
through a lovely broken country, following the line of 
Cumberland (here called Stone) Mountain, alternately 
little hills and meadows, cultivated hill-sides, stretches 
of rich valley, exquisite views — a land picturesque and 
thriving. Continuing for nine miles up Powell Val- 
ley, we turned to the left through a break in the hills 
into Poor Valley, a narrow, wild, sweet ravine among 
the hills, with a swift crystal stream overhung by 
masses of rhododendrons in bloom, and shaded by 
magnificent forest-trees. We dined at a farm-house 
by Pennington's Gap, and had a swim in the north 
fork of Powell River, which here, with many a leap, 
breaks through the bold scenery in the gap. Farther 
on, the valley was broader and more fertile, and along 
the wide reaches of the river grew enormous beech- 
trees, the russet foliage of which took on an exquisite 
color towards evening. Indeed, the ride all day was 
excitingly interesting, with the great trees, the narrow 
rich valleys, the frequent sparkling streams, and lovely 
mountain views. At sunset we came to the house of 
an important farmer who has wide jDossessions, about 
thirteen miles from Big Stone Gap. AVe have nothing 
whatever against him except that he routed us out at 
five o'clock of a foggy Sunday morning, which prom- 
ised to be warm — July 1st — to send us on our way to 
"the city." All along we had heard of "the city." 
In a radius of a hundred miles Big Stone Gap is called 
nothing but "the city," and our anticipations were 
raised. 

That morning's ride I shall not forget. We crossed 
and followed Powell River. All along the banks are 
set the most remarkable beech-trees I have ever seen 



Kentucky. 389 

— great, wide-spreading, clean-boled trees, overshad- 
ing the stream, and giving under their boughs, nearly 
all the way, ravishingly lovely views. This was the 
paradisiacal way to Big Stone Gap, which we found 
to be a round broken valley, shut in by wooded mount- 
ams, covered more or less with fine trees, the meeting- 
place of the Powell River, which comes through the 
gap, and its south fork. In the round elevation be- 
tween them is the inviting place of the future city. 
There are two Big Stone Gaps — the one open fields 
and forests, a settlement of some thirty to forty 
houses, most of them new and many in process of 
building, a hotel, and some tents ; the other, the city 
on the map. The latter is selling in small lots, has 
wide avenues, parks, one of the finest hotels in the 
South, banks, warehouses, and all that can attract the 
business man or the summer lounger. 

The heavy investments in Big Stone Gap and the 
region I should say were fully justified by the natural 
advantages. It is a country of great beauty, noble 
mountain ranges, with the valleys diversified by small 
hills, fertile intervales, fine streams, and a splendid 
forest growth. If the anticipations of an important 
city at the gap are half realized, the slopes of the hills 
and natural terraces will be dotted with beautiful res- 
idences, agreeable in both summer and winter. It 
was the warmest time of the year when we were there, 
but the air was fresh and full of vitality. The Big 
Stone Gap Improvement Company has the city and 
its site in charge; it is a consolidation of the various 
interests of railway companies and heavy capitalists, 
who have purchased the land. The money and the 
character of the men behind the enterprise insure a 



390 South and West. 

vigorous prosecution of it. On. the west side of the 
river are the depot and switching-grounds which the 
several railways have reserved for their use, and here 
also are to be the furnaces and shops. When the city- 
outgrows its present site it can extend up valleys in 
several directions. We rode through fine forests up 
the lovely Powell Yalley to Powell Mountain, where 
a broad and beautiful meadow offers a site for a sub- 
urban village. The city is already planning for sub- 
urbs. A few miles south of the city a powerful 
stream of clear water falls over precipices and rocks 
seven hundred feet in continuous rapids. This is not 
only a charming addition to the scenic attractions of 
the region, but the stream will supply the town with 
excellent water and unlimited " power." Beyond, ten 
miles to the north-east, rises High Knob, a very sightly 
point, where one gets the sort of view of four States 
that he sees on an atlas. It is indeed a delightful 
region ; but however one may be charmed by its nat- 
ural beauty, he cannot spend a day at Big Stone Gap 
without being infected with the great cnteri^rises 
brooding there. 

We forded Powell River and ascended through the 
gap on its right bank. Before entering the gorge we 
galloped over a beautiful level plateau, the counter- 
part of that where the city is laid out, reserved for 
railways and furnaces. From this point the valley is 
seen to be wider than we suspected, and to have ample 
room for the manufacturing and trafiic expected. As 
we turned to see what we shall never see again — the 
virgin beauty of nature in this site — the whole attract- 
iveness of this marvellously picturesque region burst 
upon us — the great forests, the clear swift streams, 



Kentucky: 391 

the fertile meadows, the wooded mountains that have 
so long secluded this beauty and guarded the treasures 
of the hills. 

The pass itself, which shows from a distance only a 
dent in the green foliage, surprised us by its wild 
beauty. The stony road, rising little by little above 
the river, runs through a magnificent forest, gigantic 
trees growing in the midst of enormous bowlders, and 
towering among rocks that take the form of walls and 
buttresses, square structures like the Titanic ruins of 
castles ; below, the river, full and strong, rages over 
rocks and dashes down, filling the forest with its roar, 
which is echoed by the tow^ering cliffs on either side. 
The woods were fresh and glistening from recent 
rains, but what made the final charm of the w^ay was 
the bloom of the rhododendron, which blazed along 
the road and illuminated the cool recesses of the for- 
est. The time for the blooming of the azalea and the 
kalmia (mountain-laurel) was past, but the pink and 
white rhododendron was in full glory, masses of bloom, 
not small stalks lurking like underbrush, but on bushes 
attaining the dignity of trees, and at least twenty-five 
feet high. The splendor of the forest did not lessen 
as we turned to the left and followed up Pigeon Creek 
to a high farming region, rough but fertile, at the 
base of Black Mountain. Such a wealth of oak, beech, 
poplar, chestnut, and ash, and, sprinkled in, the pretty 
cucumber-magnolia in bloom! By sunset we found 
our way, off the main road, to a lonely farm-house 
hidden away at the foot of Morris Pass, secluded be- 
hind an orchard of apple and peach trees. A stream 
of spring-water from the rocks above ran to the house,, 
and to the eastward the ravine broadened into past- 



392 South and West. 

ures. It seemed impossible to get farther from the 
world and its active currents. We were still in Vir- 
ginia. 

Our host, an old man over six feet in height, with 
spare, straight, athletic form, a fine head, and large 
clear gray eyes, lived here alone with his aged spouse. 
He had done his duty by his country in raising twelve 
children (that is the common and orthodox number in 
this region), who had all left him except one son, who 
lived in a shanty up the ravine. It was this son's wife 
who helped about the house and did the milking, 
taking care also of a growing family of her own, and 
doing her share of field-work. I had heard that the 
women in this country were more industrious than the 
men. I asked this woman, as she was milking that 
evening, if the women did all the work. No, she said ; 
only their share. Her husband was all the time in the 
field, and even her boys, one only eight, had to work 
with him ; there was no time to go to school, and in- 
deed the school didn't amount to much anyway — only 
a little while in the fall. She had all the care of the 
cows. " Men," she added, " never notice milking ; " 
and the worst of it was that she had to go miles 
around in the bush night and morning to find them. 
After supper we had a call from a bachelor who oc- 
cupied a cabin over the pass, on the Kentucky side, a 
loquacious philosopher, who squatted on his heels in 
the door-yard where we were sitting, and interro- 
gated each of us in turn as to our names, occupations, 
residence, ages, and politics, and then gave us as freely 
his own history and views of life. His eccentricity in 
this mountain region was that he had voted for Cleve- 
land and should do it again. Mr. Morris couldn't go 



Kentucky. 393 

with him in this; and when pressed for his reasons he 
said that Cleveland had had the salary long enough, 
and got rich enough out of it. The philosopher 
brought the news, had heard it talked about on Sun- 
day, that a man over Clover Fork way had killed his 
wife and brother. It was claimed to be an accident; 
they were having a game of cards and some whiskey, 
and he was trying to kill his son-in-law. Was there 
much killing round here? Well, not much lately. 
Last year John Cone, over on Clover Fork, shot Mat 
Harner in a dispute over cards. Well, what became 
of John Cone ? Oh, he was killed by Jim Blood, a 
friend of Harner. And what became of Blood ? 
Well, he got shot by Elias Travers. And Travers ? 
Oh, he was killed by a man by the name of Jacobs. 
That ended it. None of 'em was of much account. 
There was a pleasing naivete in this narrative. And 
then the philosopher, whom the milkmaid described to 
me next morning as " a simlar sort of man," went on 
to give his idea about this killing business. "All this 
killing in the mountains is foolish. If you kill a man, 
that don't aggravate him; he's dead and don't care, 
and it all comes on you." 

In the early morning we crossed a narrow pass in 
the Black Mountain into " Canetucky," and followed 
down the Clover Fork of the Cumberland. All these 
mountains are perfectly tree-clad, but they have not 
the sombreness of the high regions of the Great Smoky 
and the Black Mountains of North Carolina. There 
are few black balsams, or any sort of evergreens, and 
the great variety of deciduous trees, from the shining 
green of the oak to the bronze hue of the beech, makes 
everywhere soft gradations of color most pleasing to 



394 South and ^Yest. 

the eye. In the autumn, they say, the brilliant maples 
in combination with the soberer bronzes and yellows 
of the other forest-trees give an ineffable beauty to 
these ridges and graceful slopes. The ride down 
Clover Fork, all day long, was for the most part 
through a virgin world. The winding valley is at all 
times narrow, with here and there a tiny meadow, and 
at long intervals a lateral opening down which another 
sparkling brook comes from the recesses of this wil- 
derness of mountains. Houses are miles apart, and 
usually nothing but cabins half concealed in some 
sheltered nook. There is, however, hidden on the 
small streams, on mountain terraces, and high up on 
the slopes, a considerable population, cabin dwellers, 
cultivators of corn, on the almost perpendicular hills. 
Many of these cornfields are so steep that it is impos- 
sible to plough them, and all the cultivation is done 
with the hoe. I heard that a man was recently killed 
in this neighborhood by falling out of his cornfield. 
The story has as much foundation as the current belief 
that the only way to keep a mule in the field where 
you wish him to stay is to put him into the adjoining 
lot. But it is true that no one would believe that 
crops could be raised on such nearly perpendicular 
slopes as these unless he had seen the planted fields. 

In my limited experience I can recall no day's ride 
equal in simple natural beauty — not magnificence — 
and splendor of color to that down Clover Fork. 
There was scarcely a moment of the day when the 
scene did not call forth from us exclamations of sur- 
prise and delight. The road follows and often crosses 
the swift, clear, rocky stream. The variegated forest 
rises on either hand, but all along the banks vast trees 



Kentucky. 395 

clot the little intervales. Now 
and then, in a level reach, where the road wound 
through these monarch stems, and the water spread in 
silver pools, the perspective was entrancing. But the 
color ! For always there were the rhododendrons, 
either gleaming in masses of white and pink in the 
recesses of the forest, or forming for us an allee. close 
set, and uninterrupted for miles and miles ; shrubs 
like trees, from twenty to thirty feet high, solid bou- 
quets of blossoms, more abundant than any cultivated 
parterre, more brilliant than the finest display in a 
horticultural exhibition. There is an avenue of rho- 
dodendrons half a mile long at Hampton Court, which 
is world-wide famous. It needs a day to ride through 
the rhododendron avenue on Clover Fork, and the 
wild and free beauty of it transcends all creations of 
the gardener. 

The inhabitants of the region are primitive and to 
a considerable extent illiterate. But still many strong 
and distinguished men have come from these mount- 
ain towns. Many families send their children away 
to school, and there are fair schools at Barbersville, 
Harlan Court-house, and in other places. Long iso- 
lated from the moving world, they have retained the 
habits of the early settlers, and to some extent the 
vernacular speech, though the dialect is not specially 
marked. They have been until recently a self-sustain- 
ing people, raising and manufacturing nearly every- 
thing required by their limited knowledge and wants. 
Not long ago the women spun and wove from cotton 
and hemp and avooI the household linen, the bed- 
wear, and the clothes of the family. In many houses 
the loom is still at work. The colors used for dyeing 



396 South and West, 

were formerly all of home make except, perhaps, the 
indigo; now they use what they call the " brought in " 
dyes, bought at the stores ; and prints and other 
fabrics are largely taking the places of the home-made. 
During the morning we stopped at one of the best 
houses on the fork, a house with a small apple-orchard 
in front, having a veranda, two large rooms, and a 
porch and kitchen at the back. In the back porch 
stood the loom with its web of half-finished cloth. 
The farmer was of the age when men sun themselves 
on the gallery and talk. His wife, an intelligent, 
barefooted old woman, was still engaged in household 
duties, but her weaving days were over. Her daugh- 
ters did the weaving, and in one of the rooms were 
the linsey-woolsey dresses hung up, and piles of gor- 
geous bed coverlets, enough to set up half a dozen 
families. These are the treasures and heirlooms hand- 
ed down from mother to daughter, for these hand- 
made fabrics never wear out. Only eight of the 
twelve children were at home. The youngest, the 
baby, a sickly boy of twelve, was lounging about the 
house. He could read a little, for he had been to 
school a few weeks. Reading and writing were not 
accomplishments in the family generally. The other 
girls and boys were in the cornfield, and going to the 
back door, I saw a line of them hoeing at the top of 
the field. The field was literally so steep that they 
might have rolled from the top to the bottom. The 
mother called them in, and they lounged leisurely down, 
the girls swinging themselves over the garden fence 
with athletic ease. The four eldest were girls : one, a 
woman of thirty-five, had lost her beauty, if she ever had 
any, with her teeth; one, of thirty, recently married. 



Kentucky, 397 

had a stately dignity and a certain nobility of figure ; 
one, of sixteen, was undeniably pretty — almost the 
only woman entitled to this epithet that we saw in the 
whole journey. This household must have been an 
exception, for the girls usually marry very young. 
They were all, of course, barefooted. They were 
all laborers, and evidently took life seriously, and 
however much their knowledge of the world was 
limited, the household evidently respected itself. The 
elder girls were the weavers, and they showed a taste 
and skill in their fabrics that would be praised in the 
Orient or in Mexico. The designs and colors of the 
coverlets were ingenious and striking. There was a 
very handsome one in crimson, done in wavy lines and 
bizarre figures, that was called the Kentucky Beauty, 
or the Ocean Wave, that had a most brilliant effect. 
A simple, hospitable family this. The traveller may 
go all through this region with the certainty of kindly 
treatment, and in perfect security — if, I suppose, he 
is not a revenue officer, or sent in to survey land on 
which the inhabitants have squatted. 

We came at night to Harlan Court-house, an old 
shabby hamlet, but growing and improving, having a 
new court-house and other signs of the awakening of 
the people to the wealth here in timber and mines. 
Here in a beautiful valley three streams — Poor, Mar- 
tin, and Clover forks — unite to form the Cumberland. 
The place has fourteen " stores " and three taverns, 
the latter a trial to the traveller. Harlan has been 
one of the counties most conspicuous for lawlessness. 
The trouble is not simply individual wickedness, but 
the want of courage of public opinion, coupled with a 
general disrespect for authority. Plenty of people 



398 South and West 

lament the state of things, but want the courage to 
take a public stand. The day before we reached the 
Court-house the man who killed his wife and his brother 
had his examination. His friends were able to take 
the case before a friendly justice instead of the judge. 
The facts sworn to were that in a drunken dis2:)ute 
over cards he tried to kill his son-in-law, who escaj^ed 
out of the window, and that his wife and brother op- 
posed him, and he killed them with his pistol. There- 
fore their deaths were accidental, and he was dis- 
charged. Many people said privately that he ought 
to be hanged, but there was entire public apathy over 
the affair. If Harlan had three or four resolute men 
who would take a public stand that this lawlessness 
must cease, they could carry the community with 
them. But the difficulty of enforcing law and order 
in some of these mountain counties is to find proper 
judges, prosecuting officers, and sheriffs. The officers 
are as likely as not to be the worst men in the com- 
munity, and if they are not, they are likely to use 
their authority for satisfying their j^rivate grudges 
and revenges. Consequently men take the " law " 
into their own hands. The most personally courageous 
become bullies and the terror of the community. The 
worst citizens are not those who have killed most 
men, in the opinion of the public. It ought to be said 
that in some of the mountain counties there has been 
very little lawlessness, and in some it has been repress- 
ed by the local authorities, and there is great improve- 
ment on the whole. I was sorry not to meet a well- 
known character in the mountains, who has killed 
twenty-one men. He is a very agreeable " square " 
man, and I believe "high-toned," and it is the uni- 



Kentucky, 399 

versal testimony that he never killed a man who did 
not deserve killing, and whose death was a benefit to 
the community. He is called, in the language of the 
country, a " severe '* man. In a little company that 
assembled at the Harlan tavern were two elderly men, 
who appeared to be on friendly terms enough. Their 
sons had had a difficulty, and two boys out of each fam- 
ily had been killed not very long ago. The fathers 
were not involved in the vendetta. About the old Har- 
lan court-house a great many men have been killed 
during court week in the past few years. The habit of 
carrying pistols and knives, and whiskey, are the im- 
mediate causes of these deaths, but back of these is 
the want of respect for law. At the ford of the Cum- 
berland at Pineville was anchored a little house-boat, 
which was nothing but a whiskey-shop. During our 
absence a tragedy occurred there. The sheriff with a 
posse went out to arrest some criminals in the mount- 
ain near. He secured his men, and was bringing 
them into Pineville, when it occurred to him that it 
would be a good plan to take a drink at the house- 
boat. The whole party got into a quarrel over their 
liquor, and in it the sheriff was killed and a couple of 
men seriously wounded. A resolute surveyor, former- 
ly a general in our army, surveying land in the neigh- 
borhood of Pineville, under a decree of the United 
States Court, has for years carried on his work at tlie 
personal peril of himself and his party. The squatters 
not only pull up his stakes and destroy his work day 
after day, but it was reported that they had shot at 
his corps from the bushes. He can only go on with 
his work by employing a large guard of armed men. 
This state of things in eastern Kentucky w^ll not 



400 South and West. 

be radically changed until the railways enter it, and 
business and enterprise bring in law and order. The 
State Government cannot find native material for en- 
forcing law, though there has been improvement with- 
in the past two years. I think no permanent gain can 
be expected till a new civilization comes in, though 
I heard of a bad community in one of the counties 
that had been quite subdued and changed by the 
labors of a devout and plain-spoken evangelist. So 
far as our party was concerned, we received nothing 
but kind treatment, and saw little evidences of de- 
moralization, except that the young men usually were 
growing up to be " roughs," and liked to lounge about 
with shot-guns rather than work. But the repoi-t of 
men who have known the country for j^ears was very 
unfavorable as to the general character of the people 
who live on the mountains and in the little valleys — 
that they were all ignorant ; that the men generally 
were idle, vicious, and cowardly, and threw most of 
the hard labor in the field and house upon the Avom- 
en; that the killings are mostly done from ambush, 
and with no show for a fair fight. This is a tremen- 
dous indictment, and it is too sweeping to be sustain- 
ed. The testimony of the gentlemen of our party, 
who thoroughly know this part of the State, contra- 
dicted it. The fact is there are two sorts of people 
in the mountains, as elsewhere. 

The race of American mountaineers occupying the 
country from western North Carolina to eastern Ken- 
tucky is a curious study. Their origin is in doubt. 
They have developed their peculiarities in isolation. 
In this freedom stalwart and able men have been 
from time to time developed, but ignorance and free- 



Kentucky. 401 

dom from the restraints of law have had their logical 
result as to tlie mass. I am told that this lawlessness 
has only existed since the war; that before, the people, 
though ignorant of letters, Avere peaceful. They had 
the good points of a simple people, and if they were 
not literate, they had abundant knowledge of their 
own region. During the war the mountaineers were 
carrying on a civil war at home. The opposing parties 
were not soldiers, but bushwhackers. Some of the 
best citizens were run out of the country, and never 
returned. The majority were Unionists, and in all 
the mountain region of eastern Kentucky I passed 
through there are few to-day who are politically Dem- 
ocrats. In the war, home -guards were organized, 
and these were little better than vigilance committees 
for private revenge. Disorder began with this private 
and partly patriotic warfare. After the war, when the 
bushwhackers got back to their cabins, the animos- 
ities Avere kept up, though I fancy that politics has 
little or nothing to do with them now. The habit of 
reckless shooting, of taking justice into private hands, 
is no doubt a relic of the disorganization during the 
war. 

AVorthless, good-for-nothing, irreclaimable, were 
words I often heard applied to people of this and 
that region. I am not so despondent of their future. 
Railways, trade, the sight of enterprise and industry, 
will do much with this material. Schools Avill do 
jnore, though it seems impossible to have efficient 
schools there at present. The people in their igno- 
rance and their undeveloped country have a hard 
struggle for life. This region is, according to the 
census, the most prolific in the United States. The 
26 



402 South and West. 

girls many young, bear many children, work like 
galley-slaves, and at tlie time when women should be 
at their best they fade, lose their teeth, become ugly, 
and look old. One great cause of this is their lack of 
proper nourishment. There is nothing unhealthy in 
out-door work in moderation if the body is proper- 
ly sustained by good food. But healthy, handsome 
women are not possible without good fare. In a con- 
siderable part of eastern Kentucky (not I hear in 
all) good wholesome cooking is unknown, and civiliza- 
tion is not possible without that. We passed a cabin 
where a man was very ill with dysentery. No doctor 
could be obtained, and perhaps that, considering what 
the doctor might have been, was not a misfortune. 
But he had no food fit for a sick man, and the women 
of the house were utterly ignorant of the diet suitable 
to a man in his state. I have no doubt that the abom- 
inable cookery of the region has much to do with the 
lawlessness, as it visibly has to do with the poor 
physical condition. 

The road down the Cumberland, in a valley at times 
spreading out into fertile meadows, is nearly all the 
way through magnificent forests, along hill-sides fit 
for the vine, for fruit, and for pasture, while frequent 
outcroppings of coal testify to the abundance of the 
fuel that has been so long stored for the new civiliza- 
tion. These mountains would be profitable as sheep 
pastures did not the inhabitants here, as elsewhere in 
the United States, prefer to keep dogs rather than 
sheep. 

I have thus sketched hastily some of the capacities 
of the Cumberland region. It is my belief that this 
central and hitherto neglected portion of the United 



Kentucky, 403 

States "will soon become the theatre of vast and con- 
trolling industries. 

I want space for more than a concluding word 
about western Kentucky, which deserves, both for its 
capacity and its recent improvements, a chapter to 
itself. There is a limestone area of some 10,000 
square miles, with a soil hardly less fertile than that 
of the blue-grass region, a high agricultural develop- 
ment, and a population equal in all respects to that of 
the famous and historic grass country. Seven of the 
ten principal tobacco-producing counties in Kentucky 
and the largest Indian corn and wheat raising counties 
are in this part of the State. The western coal-field 
has both river and rail transportation, thick deposits 
of iron ore, and more level and richer farming lands 
than the eastern coal-field. Indeed, the agricultural 
development in this western coal region has attracted 
great attention. 

Much also might be written of the remarkable prog- 
ress of the towns of western Kentucky within the 
past few years. The increase in population is not 
more astonishing than the development of various 
industries. They show a vigorous, modern activity 
for which this part of the State has not, so far as I 
know, been generally credited. The traveller will 
find abundant evidence of it in Owensborough, Hen- 
derson, Hopkinsville, Bowling Green, and other places. 
As an illustration: Paducah, while doubling its popu- 
lation since 1880, has increased its manufacturing 150 
per cent. The tov/n had in 1880 twenty-six factories, 
with a capital of $600,000, employing 950 men; now 
it has fifty factories, with a cash capital of 12,000,000, 
employing 3250 men, engaged in a variety of in- 



404 South and West. 

dustries— to which a large iron furnace is now beino- 
added. Taking it all together-variety of resourced 
excellence of climate, vigor of its people-one cannot 
escape the impression that Kentucky has a ^reat 
future. 



COMMENTS ON CANADA. 



I. 

The area of the Dominion of Canada is larger than 
that of the United States, excluding Alaska. It is 
fair, however, in the comparison, to add Alaska, for 
Canada has in its domain enough arctic and practi- 
cally uninhabitable land to offset Alaska. Exclud- 
ing the boundary great lakes and rivers, Canada has 
3,470,257 square miles of territory, or more than one- 
third of the entire British Empire; the United States 
has 3,026,494 square miles, or, adding Alaska (577,390), 
3,003,884 square miles. From the eastern limit of the 
maritime provinces to Vancouver Island the distance 
is over three thousand five hundred miles. This 
whole distance is settled, but a considerable portion 
of it only by a thin skirmish line. I have seen a map, 
colored according to the maker's idea of fertility, on 
which Canada appears little more than a green flush 
along the northern boundary of the United States. 
With a territory equal to our own, Canada has the 
population of the single State of New York — about 
five millions. 

Most of Canada lies north of the limit of what was 
reckoned agreeably habitable before it was discovered 
that climate depends largely on altitude, and that the 
isothermal lines and the lines of latitude do not coin- 
cide. The division between the two countries is, how- 
ever, mainly a natural one, on a divide sloping one 
way to the arctic regions, the other way to the tropics. 
It would seem better map-making to us if our line fol- 



408 Comments on Canada, 

lowed the northern mountains of Maine and included 
New Brunswick and the other maritime provinces. 
But it would seem a better rectification to Canadians 
if their line included Maine with the harbor of Port- 
land, and dipped down in the [N'orth-west so as to take 
in the Red River of the Xorth, and all the waters 
discharging into Hudson's Bay. 

The great bulk of Canada is on the arctic slope. 
AYhen we pass the highlands of New Hampshire, Ver- 
mont, and New York we fall away into a wide cham- 
paign country. The only break in this is the Lauren- 
tian granite mountains, north of the St. Lawrence, 
the oldest land above water, now degraded into hills 
of from 1500 to 2000 feet in height. The central 
mass of Canada consists of three great basins : that 
portion of the St. Lawrence in the Dominion, 400,000 
square miles; the Hudson's Bay, 2,000,000 square 
miles; the Mackenzie, 550,000 square miles. That is 
to sa}^ of the 3,470,257 square miles of the area of 
Canada, 3,010,000 have a northern slope. 

This decrease in altitude from our northern boun- 
dary makes Canada a possible nation. The Rocky 
Mountains fall away north into the Mackenzie plain. 
The highest altitude attained by the Union Pacific 
Railroad is 8240 feet; the highest of the Canadian 
Pacific is 5296; and a line of railway still farther 
north, from the North Saskatchewan region, can, and 
doubtless some time will, reach the Pacific without 
any obstruction by the Rockies and the Selkirks. In 
estimating, therefore, the capacity of Canada for sus- 
taining a large population we have to remember that 
the greater portion of it is but little above the sea-level ; 
that the climate of the interior is modified by vast 



Comments on Canada. 409 

bodies of water ; that the maximum summer heat of 
Montreal and Quebec exceeds that of New York; and 
that there is a vast region east of the Rockies and 
north of the Canadian Pacific Railway, not only the 
plains drained by the two branches of the Saskatche- 
wan, but those drained by the Peace River still farther 
north, which have a fair share of summer weather, and 
winters much milder than are enjoyed in our Terri- 
tories farther south but higher in altitude. The sum- 
mers of this vast region are by all reports most 
agreeable, warm days and refreshing nights, with a 
stimulating atmosphere; winters with little snow, and 
usually bright and j^leasant, occasional falls of the 
thermometer for two or three days to arctic tempera- 
ture, but as certain a recovery to mildness by the 
"Chinook " or Pacific winds. It is estimated that the 
plains of the Saskatchewan — 500,000 square miles — are 
capable of sustaining a population of thirty millions. 
But nature there must call forth a good deal of human 
energy and endurance. There is no doubt that frosts 
are liable to come very late in the spring and very 
early in the autumn; that persistent winds are hostile 
to the growth of trees ; and that varieties of hardy 
cereals and fruits must be selected for success in ag- 
riculture and horticulture. The winters are exceed- 
ingly severe on all the prairies east of Winnipeg, and 
westward on the Canadian Pacific as far as Medicine 
Hat, the crossing of the South Saskatchewan. Heavy 
items in the cost of living there must always be fuel, 
warm clothing, and solid houses. Fortunately the 
region has an abundance of lignite and extensive fields 
of easily workable coal. 

Canada is really two countries, separated from each 



410 Comments on Canada. 

other by the vast rocky wilderness between the lakes 
and James Bay. For a thousand miles west of Ot- 
tawa, till the Manitoba prairie is reached, the traveller 
on the line of the railway sees little but granite rock 
and stunted balsams, larches, and poplars — a dreary 
region, impossible to attract settlers. Copper and 
other minerals there are; and in the region north of 
Lake Superior there is no doubt timber, and arable 
land is spoken of ; but the country is really unknown. 
Portions of this land, like that about Lake Nipigon, 
offer attractions to sportsmen. Lake navigation is 
impracticable about four months in the year, so that 
Canada seems to depend for political and commercial 
unity upon a telegraph wire and two steel rails run- 
ning a thousand miles through a region where local 
traffic is at present insignificant. 

The present government of Canada is an evolution 
on British lines, modified by the example of the re- 
public of the United States. In form the resemblances 
are striking to the United States, but underneath, the 
differences are radical. There is a supreme federal 
government, comprehending a union of provinces, 
each having its local government. But the union in 
the two countries was brought about in a different 
way, and the restrictive powers have a different origin. 
In the one, power descends from the Crown; in the 
other, it originates with the people. In the Dominion 
Government all the powers not delegated to the 
provinces are held by the Federal Government. In 
the United States, all the powers not delegated to the 
Federal Government by the States are held by the 
States. In the United States, delegates from the colo- 
nies, specially elected for the purpose, met to put in 



Comments on Canada. 411 

shape a imion already a necessity of the internal and 
external situation. And the union expressed in the 
Constitution was accepted by the popular vote in each 
State. In the provinces of Canada there was a long 
and successful struggle for responsible government. 
The first union was of the two Canadas, in 1840; that 
is, of the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada — 
Ontario and Quebec — with Parliaments sitting some- 
times in Quebec and sometimes in Toronto, and at 
last in Ottawa, a site selected by the Queen. This 
Government was carried on with increasing friction. 
There is not space here to sketch the politics of 
this epoch. Many causes contributed to this friction, 
but the leading ones were the antagonism of French 
and English ideas, the superior advance in wealth 
and population of Ontario over Quebec, and the 
resistance of what was called French domination. 
At length, in 1863-64, the two parties, the Conser- 
vatives and the Liberals (or, in the political nomen- 
clature of the day, the " Tories " and the *' Grits " 
— i. e., those of "clear grit"), were so evenly divid- 
ed that a dead-lock occurred, neither was able to 
carry on the government, and a coalition ministry 
was formed. Then the subject of colonial confedera- 
tion was actively agitated. Nova Scotia and New 
Brunswick contemplated a legislative union of the 
maritime provinces, and a conference was called at 
Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, in the summer 
of 1864. Having in view a more comprehensive un- 
ion, the Canadian Government sought and obtained 
admission to this conference, which was soon swal- 
lowed up in a larger scheme, and a conference of all 
the colonies was appointed to be held at Quebec in 



412 Comments on Canada, 

October. Delegates, thirty-three in number, were 
present from, all the provinces, probably sent by the 
respective legislatures or governments, for I find no 
note of a popular election. The result of this confer- 
ence was the adoption of resolutions as a basis of an 
act of confederation. The Canadian Parliament adopt- 
ed this scheme after a protracted debate. But the 
maritime provinces stood out. Meantime the Civil 
War in the United States, the Fenian invasion, and the 
abrogation of the reciprocity treaty fostered a spirit 
of Canadian nationality, and discouraged whatever 
feeling existed for annexation to the United States. 
The colonies, therefore, with more or less willingness, 
came into the plan, and in 1867 the English Parlia- 
ment passed the British IsTorth American Act, which 
is the charter of the Dominion. It established the 
union of the provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and 
New Brunswick, and provided for the admission to 
the union of the other parts of British North America; 
that is, Prince Edward Island, the Hudson Bay Terri- 
tory, British Columbia, and Newfoundland, with its 
dependency Labrador. Nova Scotia was, however, 
still dissatisfied with the terms of the union, and was 
only reconciled on the granting of additional annual 
subsidies. 

In 1868, by Act of the British Parliament, the Hud- 
son's Bay Company surrendered to the Crown its ter- 
ritorial rights over the vast region it controlled, in 
consideration of £300,000 sterling, grants of land 
around its trading posts to the extent of fifty thou- 
sand acres in all, and one-twentieth of all the fertile 
land south of the north branch of the Saskatchewan, 
retaining its privileges of trade, without its exclusive 



Comments on Canada. 413 

monopoly. The attempt of the Dominion Government 
to take possession of this north-west territory (Mani- 
toba was created a province July 15, 1870) was met 
by the rising of the squatters and half-breeds under 
Louis Riel in ISGQ-YO. Kiel formed a provisional 
government, and proceeded with a high hand to ban- 
ish persons and confiscate property, and on a drum- 
head court-martial put to death Thomas Scott, a Cana- 
dian militia officer. The murder of Scott provoked 
intense excitement throughout Canada, especially in 
Ontario. Colonel Garnet Wolseley's expedition to 
Fort Garry (now Winnipeg) followed, and the Gov- 
ernment authority was restored. Riel and his squat- 
ter confederates fled, and he was subsequently par- 
doned. 

In 1871 British Columbia was admitted into the 
Dominion. In 1873 Prince Edward Island came in. 
The original Act for establishing the province of 
Manitoba provided for a Lieutenant-governor, a Leg- 
islative Council, and an elected Legislative Assembly. 
In 1876 Manitoba abolished the Council, and the gov- 
ernment took its present form of a Lieutenant-gov- 
ernor and one Assembly. By subsequent legislation 
of the Dominion the district of Keewatin was created 
out of the eastern portion of the north-west territory, 
under the jurisdiction of the Lieutenant-governor of 
Manitoba, ex officio. The Territories of Assiniboin, 
Alberta, and Saskatchewan have been organized into 
a Territory called the North-west Territory, with a 
Lieutenant-governor and Council, and a represent- 
ative in Parliament, the capital being Regina. Out- 
side of this Territory, to the northward, lies Athabas- 
ca, of which the Lieutenant-governor at Regina is ex 



414 Comments on Canada. 

officio ruler. Newfoundland still remains independent, 
although negotiations for union were revived in 1888. 
Some years ago overtures were made for taking in 
Jamaica to the union, and a delegation from that 
island visited Ottawa ; but nothing came of the pro- 
posal. It was said that the Jamaica delegates thought 
the Dominion debt too large. 

The Dominion of Canada, therefore, has a central 
government at Ottawa, and is composed of the prov- 
inces of Nova Scotia (including Cape Breton), New 
Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Ontario, 
Manitoba, British Columbia, and the North-west Ter- 
ritory. 

It has been necessary to speak in this brief detail 
of the manner of the formation of the union in 
order to understand the politics of Canada. For 
there are radicals in the Liberal party who still re- 
gard the union as forced and artificial, and say that 
tlie provinces outside of Ontario and Quebec were 
brought in only by the promise of local railways and 
the payment of large subsidies. And this idea more 
or less influences the opposition to the " strong gov- 
ernment " at Ottawa. I do not say that the Liberals 
oppose the formation of a "nation"; but they are 
critics of its methods, and array themselves for pro- 
vincial rights as against federal consolidation. 

The Federal Government consists of the Queen, the 
Senate, and the House of Commons. The Queen is 
represented by the Governor-general, who is paid by 
Canada a salary of fifty thousand dollars a year. He 
has his personal staff, and is aided and advised by 
a council, called the Queen's Privy Council of Can- 
ada, tliirteen members, constituting the ministry, who 



Comments on Canada. 415 

must be sustained by a Parliamentary majority. The 
English model is exactly followed. The Governor 
has nominally the power of veto, but his use of it 
is as much in abeyance as is the Queen's prerogative 
in regard to Acts of Parliament. The premier is in 
fact the ruler, but his power depends upon possess- 
ing a majority in the House of Commons. This 
responsible government, therefore, more quickly re- 
sponds to popular action than ours. The Senators are 
chosen for life, and are in fact appointed by the pre- 
mier in power. The House of Commons is elected 
for five years, unless Parliament is sooner dissolved, 
and according to a ratio of population to correspond 
with the province of Quebec, which has always the 
fixed number of sixty-five members. The voter for 
members of Parliament must have certain property 
qualifications, as owner or tenant, or, if in a city or 
tow^n, as earning three hundred dollars a j^ear — qualifi- 
cations S'o low as practically to exclude no one Avho is 
not an idler and a Avaif ; the Indian may vote (though 
not in the Territories), but the Mongolian or Chinese 
is excluded. Members of the House may be returned 
by any constituency in the Dominion without refer- 
ence to residence. All bills affecting taxation or 
revenue must originate in the House, and be recom- 
mended by a message from the Governor-general. 
The Government introduces bills, and takes the respon- 
sibility of them. The premier is leader of the House; 
there is also a recognized leader of the Opposition. 
In case the Government cannot command a majority 
it resigns, and the Governor-general forms a new 
cabinet. In theory, also, if the Crown (represented 
by the Governor-general) should resort to the extreme 



416 Comments on Canada. 

exercise of its prerogative in refusing the advice of 
its ministers, the ministers must submit, or resign and 
give place to others. 

The Federal Government has all powers not granted 
expressly to the provinces. In practice its jurisdic- 
tion extends over the public debt, expenditure, and 
public loans; treaties; customs and excise duties; trade 
and commerce ; navigation, shipping, and fisheries ; 
light-houses and harbors; the postal, naval, and mili- 
tary services; public statistics; monetary institutions, 
banks, banking, currency, coining (but all coining is 
done in England); insolvency; criminal law; marriage 
and divorce; public works, railways, and canals. 

The provinces have no militia; that all belongs to 
the Dominion. Marriage is solemnized according to 
provincial regulations, but the power of divorce exists 
in Canada in the Federal Parliament only, except in 
the province of New Brunswick. This province has 
a court of divorce and matrimonial causes, with a 
single judge, a survival of pre-confederation times, 
which grants divorces a vinculo for scriptural causes, 
and a mensd et thoro for desertion or cruelty, with 
right of appeal to the Supreme Court of the province 
and to the Privy Council of the Dominion. Criminal 
law is one all over the Dominion, but there is no law 
against adultery or incest. The British Act contains 
no provision analogous to that in the Constitution of 
the United States which forbids any State to pass a 
law impairing the obligation of contracts — a serious 
defect. 

The Federal Government has a Supreme Court, con- 
sisting of a chief -justice and five puisne judges, which 
has original jurisdiction in civil suits involving the 



Comments on Canada. 417 

validity of Dominion and provincial acts, and appel- 
late in appeals from the provincial courts. The Fed- 
eral Government appoints and pays the judges of the 
Superior, District, and County courts of the provinces; 
but the provinces may constitute, maintain, and or- 
ganize provincial courts, civil and criminal, including 
procedure in civil matters in those courts. But as 
the provinces cannot appoint any judicial officer above 
the rank of magistrate, it may happen that a consti- 
tuted court may be inoperative for want of a judge. 
This is one of the points of friction between the fed- 
eral and provincial authorities, and in the fall of 1888 
it led to the trouble in Quebec, when the Ottawa 
cabinet disallowed the appointment of two provincial 
judges made by the Quebec premier. 

The Dominion has another power unknown to our 
Constitution; that is, disallowance or veto of provin- 
cial acts. This power is regarded with great jealousy 
by the provinces. It is claimed by one party that it 
should only be exercised on the ground of unconstitu- 
tionality; by the other, that it may be exercised in 
the interest of the Dominion generally. As a matter 
of fact it has been sometimes exercised in cases that 
the special province felt to be an interference with its 
rights. 

Another cause of friction, aggravated by the power 
of disallowance, has arisen from conflict in jurisdic- 
tion as to railways. Both the Dominion and the 
provinces may charter and build railways. But the 
British Act forbids the province to legislate as to 
lines of steam or other ships, railways, canals, and 
telegraphs connecting the province with any other 
province, or extending beyond its limits, or any such 
27 



418 Comments on Canada, 

TTork actually within the limits which the Canadian 
Parliament may declare for the general advantage of 
Canada; that is, declare it to be a Dominion work. 
A promoter, therefore, cannot tell with any certainty 
what a charter is worth, or who will have jurisdiction 
over it. The trouble in Manitoba in the fall of 1888 
between the province and the Canadian Pacific road 
(which is a Dominion road in the meaning of the Act) 
could scarcely have arisen if the definition of Do- 
minion and provincial rights had been clearer. 

But a more serious cause of weakness to the prov- 
inces and embarrassment to the Dominion is in the 
provincial subsidies. When the present confedera- 
tion was formed the Dominion took on the provincial 
debts up to a certain amount. It also agreed to pay 
annually to each province, in half-yearly payments, a 
subsidy. By the British Act this annual payment 
was $80,000 to Ontario, $70,000 to Quebec, $60,000 to 
Nova Scotia, $50,000 to New Brunswick, with some- 
thing additional to the last two. In 1886-87 the subsi- 
dies paid to all the provinces amounted to $4,169,341. 
This is as if the United States should undertake to 
raise a fixed revenue to distribute among the States — 
a proceeding alien to our ideas of the true function 
of the General Government, and certain to lead to 
State demoralization, and tending directly to under- 
mine its self-support and dignity. It is an idea quite 
foreign to the conception of political economy that 
it is best for people to earn what they spend, and only 
spend what they earn. This subsidy under the Act 
was a grant equal to eighty cents a head of the pop- 
ulation. Besides this there is given to each prov- 
ince an annual allowance for government ; also an 



Comments on Canada, 419 

annual allowance of interest on the amount of debt 
allowed where the province has not reached the limit 
of the authorized debt. It is the theory of the Federal 
Government that in taking on these pecuniary burdens 
of the provinces they will individually feel them less, 
and that if money is to be raised the Dominion can 
procure it on more favorable terms than the provinces. 
The system, nevertheless, seems vicious to our appre- 
hension, for nothing is clearer to us than that neither 
the State nor the general w^elfare would be promoted 
if the States were pensioners of the General Govern- 
ment. 

The provinces are miniature copies of the Dominion 
Government. Each has a Lieutenant-governor, who 
is appointed by the Ottawa Governor-general and 
ministry (that is, in fact, by the premier), whose sal- 
ary is paid by the Dominion Parliament. In theory 
he represents the Crown, and is above parties. He 
forms his cabinet out of the party in majority in the 
elective Assembly. Each province has an elective 
Assembly, and most of them have two Houses, one of 
which is a Senate appointed for life. The provincial 
cabinet has a premier, "who is the leader of the House, 
and the Opposition is represented by a recognized 
leader. The Government is as responsible as the 
Federal Government. This organization of recog- 
nized and responsible leaders greatly facilitates the 
despatch of public business. Affairs are brought to 
a direct issue; and if the Government cannot carry 
its measures, or a dead-lock occurs, the ministry is 
changed, or an appeal is had to the people. Canadian 
statesmen point to the want of responsibility in the 
conduct of public business in our House, and the 



420 CommenU on Canada. 

dead-lock betwoen the Senate and the House, as a 
state of tilings that needs a remeviy. 

The provinces retain possession of the public lands 
belonging to thein at the time of confederation : 
Manitoba, which had none when it was createii a 
province out of north-west territory, has since had a 
gift of swamp lands from the Dominion. Emigra- 
tion and immigration are subjects of both federal and 
provincial legislation, but provincial laws must not 
conflict with federal laws. 

The provinces appoint all officers for the adminis- 
tration of justice except judges, and are charged with 
the general administration of justice and the mainten- 
ance of civil and criminal courts; they control jails, 
prisons, and reformatories, but not the penitentiaries, 
to which convicts sentenced for over two years must 
be committed. They control also asylums and chari- 
table institutions, all strictly municipal institutions, 
local works, the solemnization of marriage, property 
and civil rights, and shop, tavern, and other licenses. 
In regard to the latter, a conflict of jurisdiction arose 
on the passage in 1S7S by the Canadian Parliament of 
a temperance Act. The result of judicial and Privy 
Council decisions on this was to sustain the right of 
the Dominion to legislate on temperance, but to give 
to the provincial legislatures the right to deal with 
the subject of licenses for the sale of liquors. In 
the Territories prohibition prevails under the federal 
statutes, modified by the right of the Lieutenant- 
governor to grant speoi:U permits. The effect of the 
general law has been most salutary in excluding liquor 
from the Indians. 

But the most important subject left to the provinces 



Coj7}?ne}iU tvi Canada. 421 

is education, over which thoy have exclusive control. 
"S^liat this means we shall see when we come to con- 
sider the provinces ot Quebec and Ontario as illustra- 
tions. 

Broadly stated, Canada has representative govern- 
ment by ministers responsible to the people, a federal 
government charged with the general good of the 
whole, and provincial governments attending to local 
interests. It differs widely from the Englisli Govern- 
ment in subjects remitted to the provincial legisla- 
tures and in the freedom of the municipalities, so that 
Canada has self-government comparable to that in the 
United States. Two striking limitations are that the 
provinces cannot keep a militia force, and that the 
provinces have no power of final legislation, every Act 
being subject to Dominion revision and veto. 

The two parties are arranged on general lines that 
we might expect from the organization of the central 
and the local governments. The Conservative, which 
calls itself Liberal-Conservative, inclines to the con- 
solidation and increase of federal power; the Liberal 
(styled the "Grits'") is what we would call a State- 
rights party. Curiously enough, while the Ottawa 
Government is Conservative, and the ministry of Sir 
John A. Macdonald is sustained by a handsome ma- 
jority, all the provincial governnaents are at present 
Liberal. The Conservatives say that this is because 
the opinion of the country sustains the general Con- 
servative policy for the development of the Dominion, 
so that the same constituency will elect a Conservative 
member to the Dominion House and a Liberal member 
to the provincial House. The Liberals say that this 
result in some cases is brono^ht about by the manner 



422 Comments on Canada. 

in which the central Government has arranged the 
voting districts for the central Parliament, which do 
not coincide with the provincial districts. There is 
no doubt some truth in this, but I believe that at 
present the sentiment of nationality is what sustains 
the Conservative majority in the Ottawa Government. 
The general policy of the Conservative Government 
may fairly be described as one for the rapid develop- 
ment of the country. This leads it to desire more 
federal power, and there are some leading spirits who, 
although content with the present Constitution, would 
not oppose a legislative union of all the provinces. 
The policy of "development" led the party to adopt 
the present moderate protective tariff. It led it to 
the building of railways, to the granting of subsidies, 
in money and in land, to railways, to the subsidizing 
of steamship lines, to the active stimulation of immi- 
gration by offering extraordinary inducements to set- 
tlers. Having a vast domain, sparsely settled, but 
capable of sustaining a population not less dense than 
that in the northern parts of Europe, the ambition of 
the Conservative statesmen has been to open up the re- 
sources of the country and to plant a powerful nation. 
The Liberal criticism of this programme I shall speak 
of later. At present it is sufficient to say that the 
tariff did stimulate and build up manufactories in cot- 
ton, leather, iron, including implements of agriculture, 
to the extent that they were more than able to supply 
the Canadian market. As an item, after the abroga- 
tion of the reciprocity treaty, the factories of Ontario 
were able successfully to compete with the United 
States in the supply of agricultural implements to the 
great North-west, and in fact to take the market. I 



Comments on Canada. 423 

think it cannot be denied that the protective tariff did 
not only build up home industries, but did give an ex- 
traordinary stimulus to the general business of the 
Dominion. 

Under this policy of development and subsidies the 
Dominion has been accumulating a debt, which now 
reaches something over $260,000,000. Before esti- 
mating the comparative size of this debt, the statis- 
tician wants to see whether this debt and the provin- 
cial debts together equal, per capita, the federal and 
State debts together of the United States. It is esti- 
mated by one authority that the public lands of the Do- 
minion could pay the debt, and it is noted that it has 
mainly been made for railways, canals, and other perma- 
nent improvements, and not in offensive or defensive 
wars. The statistical record of 1887 estimates that the 
provincial debts added to the public debt give a per cap- 
ita of $48.88. The same year the united debts of States 
and general government in the United States gave a 
per capita of $32, but, the municipal and county debts 
added, the per capita would be $55. If the unreport- 
ed municipal debts in Canada were added, I suppose 
the per capita would somewhat exceed that in the 
United States. 

Before glancing at the development and condition 
of Canada in confederation we will complete the 
official outline by a reference to the civil service and 
to the militia. The British Government has with- 
drawn all the imperial troops from Canada except 
a small garrison at Halifax, and a naval establishment 
there and at Victoria. The Queen is commander-in- 
chief of all the military and naval forces in Canada, 
but the control of the same is in the Dominion Parlia- 



424 Comments 07i Canada. 

ment. The general of the military force is a British 
officer. There are permanent corps and schools of in- 
struction in various places, amounting in ail to about 
950 men, exclusive of officers, and the number is limit- 
ed to 1000. There is a royal military school at Kings- 
ton, with about 80 cadets. The active militia, Decem- 
ber 31, 1887, in all the provinces, the whole being 
under Dominion control, amounted to 38,152. The 
military expenditure that year was $1,281,255. The 
diminishing military pensions of that year amounted 
to 835,100. The reserve militia includes all the male 
inhabitants of the age of eighteen and under sixty. 
In 1887 the total active cavalry was under 2000. 

The members of the civil service are nearly all Ca- 
nadians. In the Federal Government and in the prov- 
inces there is an organized system; the federal system 
has been constantly amended, and is not yet free of 
recognized defects. The main points of excellence, 
more or less perfectly attained, may be stated to be a 
decent entrance examination for all, a sj^ecial, strict, 
and particular examination for some who are to un- 
dertake technical duties, and a secure tenure of office. 
The federal Act of 188G, which has since been amended 
in details, was not arrived at without many exper- 
iments and the accumulation of testimonies and di- 
verse reports ; and it did not follow exactly the 
majority report of 1881, but leaned too much, in the 
judgment of many, to the English system, the working 
of which has not been satisfactory. The main feat- 
ures of the Act, omitting details, are these: The service 
has two divisions — first, deputy heads of departments 
and employes in the Ottawa departments ; second, 
others than those employed in Ottawa departments. 



Comments on Canada. 425 

including customs officials, inland revenue officials, 
post-office inspectors, railway mail clerks, city post- 
masters, their assistants, clerks, and carriers, and in- 
spector of penitentiaries. A board of three examiners 
is appointed by the Governor in council. All appoint- 
ments shall be "during pleasure," and no persons shall 
be appointed or promoted to any place below that 
of deputy head unless he has passed the requisite ex- 
amination and served the probationary term of six 
months; he must not be over thirty-five years old for 
appointment in Ottawa departments (this limit is not 
fixed for the "outside" appointments), nor under fif- 
teen in a lower grade than third-class clerk, nor under 
eighteen in other cases. Appointees must be sound 
in health and of good character. Women are not ap- 
pointed. A deputy head may be removed " on pleas- 
ure," but the reasons for the removal must be laid 
before both Houses of Parliament. Appointments 
may be made without reference to age on the report 
of the deputy head, on account of technical or profes- 
sional qualifications or the public interest. City post- 
masters, and such officers as inspectors and collectors, 
may be appointed without examination or reference to 
the rules for promotion. Examinations are dispensed 
with in other special cases. Removals may be made 
by the Governor in council. Reports of all examina- 
tions and of the entire civil service list must be laid 
before Parliament each session. Amendments have 
been made to the law in the direction of relievins: 
from examination on their promotion men w^ho have 
been long in the service, and an amendment of last 
session omitted some examinations altogether. 

It must be stated also that the service is not free from 



426 Comments on Canada. 

favoritism, and that influence is used, if not always 
necessary, to get in and to get on in it. The law has 
been gone around by means of the plea of " special 
qualifications," and this evasion has sometimes been 
considered a political necessity on account of service 
to a minister or to the party generally. I suppose 
that the party in power favors its own adherents. 
The competitive system of England has a mischievous 
effect in the encouragement of the examinations to 
direct studies towards a service which nine in ten of 
the applicants will never reach. This evil, of numbers 
qualified but not appointed, has grown so great in 
Canada that it has lately been ordered that there shall 
be only one examination in each year. 

The federal pension system cannot be considered 
settled. A man may be superannuated at any time, 
but by custom, not law, he retires at the full age of 
sixty. AYhile in service he pays a superannuation 
allowance of two and a half per cent, on his salary for 
thirty-five years; after that, no more. If he is super- 
annuated after ten years' service, say, he gets one- 
fiftieth of his salary for each year. If he is not in 
fault in any way. Government may add ten years more 
to his service, so as to give him a larger allowance. 
If a man serves the full term of thirty -five years he 
gets thirty-five fiftieths of his salary in pension. This 
pension system, recognized as essential to a good civil 
service, has this weakness : A man pays two and a 
half per cent, of his salary for twenty years. If the 
salarj^ is $3000, his payments would have amounted 
to $1200, with interest, in that time. If he then dies, 
his widow gets only two months' salary as a solatium ; 
all the rest is lost to her, and goes to the superannua- 



Comments on Canada. 427 

tion fund of the treasury. Or, a man is superannuated 
after thirty-five years; he has paid perhaps $2100, with 
interest; he draws, say, one year's superannuative al- 
lowance, and then dies. His family get nothing at 
all, not even the two months' salary they would have 
had if he had died in service. This is illogical and 
unjust. If the two and a half per cent, had been put 
into a life policy, the insurance being undertaken by 
the Government, a decent sum would have been real- 
ized at death. 

A civil service is also established in the provinces. 
That in Quebec is better organized than the federal; 
the Government adds to the pension fund one-fourth 
of that retained from the salaries, and half pensions 
are extended to widows and children. 

It will be seen that this pension is an essential part 
of the civil service system, and the method of it is at 
once a sort of insurance and a stimulation to faithful 
service. Good service is a constant inducement to 
retention, to promotion, and to increase of pension. 
The Canadians say that the systems work well both in 
the federal and provincial services, and in this respect, 
as well as in the matter of responsible government, 
they think their government superior to ours. 

The policy of the Dominion Government, when con- 
federation had given it the form and territory of a 
great nation, was to develop this into reality and 
solidity by creating industries, building railways, and 
filling up the country with settlers. As to the means 
of carrying out this the two parties differed somewhat. 
The Conservatives favored active stimulation to the 
extent of drawing on the future ; the Liberals favored 
what they call a more natural if a slower growth. To 



428 Comments 07i Canada. 

illustrate : the Conservatives enacted a tariff, Tvliich 
was protective, to build up industries, and it is now 
continued, as in their view a necessity for raising the 
revenue needed for government expenses and for the 
development of the country. The Liberals favored a 
low tariff, and in the main the principles of free-trade. 
It might be impertinence to attempt to say now 
whether the Canadian affiliations are with the Dem- 
ocratic or the Republican party in the United States, 
but it is historical to say that for the most part the 
Unionists had not the sympathy of the Conservatives 
during our Civil War, and that they had the sympathy 
of the Liberals generally, and that the sympathy of the 
Liberals continued with the Republican party down to 
the Presidential campaign of 1884. It seemed to the 
Conservatives a necessity for the unity and growth of 
the Dominion to push railway construction. The Lib- 
erals, if I understand their policy, opposed mortgag- 
ing the future, and would rather let railways spring 
from local action and local necessity throughout the 
Dominion. But whatever the policies of parties may 
be, the Conservative Government has promoted by sub- 
sidies of money and grants of land all the great so- 
called Dominion railways. The chief of these in 
national importance, because it crosses the continent, 
is the Canadian Pacific. In order that I might under- 
stand its relation to the development of the country, 
and have some comprehension of the extent of Cana- 
dian territory, I made the journey on this line — 3000 
miles — from Montreal to Vancouver. 

The Canadians have contributed liberally to the 
promotion of railways. The Hand-book of 1886 saj'S 
that $187,000,000 have been given by the governments 



Comments on Canada. 429 

(federal and provincial) and by the municipalities to- 
wards the construction of the 13,000 miles of railways 
within the Dominion. The same authority says that 
from 1881 to July, 1885, the Federal Government gave 
$74,500,000 to the Canadian Pacific. The Conserva- 
tives like to note that the railway development corre- 
si)onds with the political life of Sir John A. Macdon- 
ald, for upon his entrance upon political life in 1844 
there were only fourteen miles of railway in operation. 
The Federal Government began surveys for the Ca- 
nadian Pacific road in 1871, a company was chartered 
the same year to build it, but no results followed. 
The Government then began the construction itself, 
and built several disconnected sections. The present 
company was chartered in 1880. The Dominion Gov- 
ernment granted it a subsidy of $25,000,000 and 25,- 
000,000 acres of land, and transferred to it, free of 
cost, 713 miles of railway which had been built by 
the Government, at a cost of about $35,000,000. In 
November, 1885, considerably inside the time of con- 
tract, the road was finished to the Pacific, and in 188G 
cars were running regularly its entire length. In 
point of time, and considering the substantial charac- 
ter of the road, it is a marvellous achievement. Sub- 
sequently, in order to obtain a line from Montreal to 
the maritime ports, a subsidy of $186,000 per annum 
for a term of twenty years was granted to the Atlantic 
and North-west Railway Company, which undertook 
to build or acquire a line from Montreal via Sher- 
brooke, and across the State of Maine to St. John, 
St. Andrews, and Halifax. This is one of the leased 
lines of the Canadian Pacific, which finished it last 
December. 



430 Comments on Canada. 

The main line, from Quebec to Montreal and Van- 
couver, is 3065 miles. The leased lines measure 2412 
miles, one under construction 112, making a total 
mileage of 5589. Adding to this the lines in which 
the company's influence amounts to a control (includ- 
ing those on American soil to St. Paul and Chicago), 
the total mileage of the company is over 6500. The 
branch lines, built or acquired in Quebec, Ontario, and 
Manitoba, are all necessary feeders to the main line. 
The cost of the Canadian Pacific, including the line 
built by the Government and acquired (not leased) 
lines, is: Cost of road, 8lT0,689,629.51; equipment, 
$10,570,933.22; amount of deposit with Government 
to guarantee three per cent, on capital stock until Au- 
gust 17, 1893, $10,310,954.75. Total, $191,571,517.48. 

Without going into the financial statement, nor ap- 
pending the leases and guarantees, any further than 
to note that the capital stock is $65,000,000 and the 
first mortgage bonds (five per cent.) are $34,999,633, 
it is only necessary to say that in the report the capital 
foots up $112,908,019. The total earnings for 1885 
were $8,368,493; for 1886, $10,081,803; for 1887, 
$11,606,412, while the working expenses for 1887 were 
$8,102,294. The gross earnings for 1888 are about 
$14,000,000, and the net earnings about $4,000,000. 
These figures show the steady growth of business. 

Being a Dominion road, and favored, the company 
had a monopoly in Manitoba for building roads south 
of its line and roads connectincr with foreicjn lines. 
This monopoly was surrendered in 1887 upon agree- 
ment of the Dominion Government to guarantee 3-|- 
per cent, interest on $15,000,000 of the company's 
land grant bonds for fifty years. The company has 



Comments on Canada. 431 

paid its debt to the Government, partly by surrender 
of a portion of its lands, and now absolutely owns its 
entire line free of Government obligations. It has, 
however, a claim upon the Government of something 
like six million dollars, now in litigation, on portions 
of the mountain sections of the road built by the 
Government, which are not up to the standard guar- 
anteed in the contract with the company. 

The road was extended to the Pacific as a necessity 
of the national development, and the present Govern- 
ment is convinced that it is worth to the country 
all it has cost. The Liberals' criticism is that the Gov- 
ernment has spent a vast sum for what it can show 
no assets, and that it has enriched a private compa- 
ny instead of owning the road itself. The propert}^ 
is no doubt a good one, for the road is well built as 
to grades and road-bed, excellently equipped, and not- 
withstanding the heavy Lake Superior and mountain 
work, at a less cost than some roads that preceded it. 

The full significance of this transcontinental line 
to Canada, Great Britain, and the United States will 
appear upon emphasizing the value of the line across 
the State of Maine to connect with St. John and Hali- 
fax; upon the fact that its western terminus is in regu- 
lar steamer communication with Hong-Kong via Yo- 
kohama; that the company is building new and swift 
steamers for this line, to which the British Govern- 
ment has granted an annual subsidy of £60,000, and 
the Dominion one of $15,000 ; that a line will run 
from Vancouver to Australia ; and that a part of this 
round-the-world route is to be a line of fast steamers 
between Halifax and England. The Canadian Pacific 
is England's shortest route to her Pacific colonies. 



432 Comments on Canada. 

and to Japan and China; and in case of a blockade in 
the Suez Canal it would become of the first impor- 
tance for Australia and India. It is noted as signifi- 
cant by an enthusiast of the line that the first loaded 
train that passed over its entire length carried British 
naval stores transferred from Quebec to Vancouver, 
and that the first car of merchandise was a cargo of 
Jamaica sugar refined at Halifax and sent to British 
Columbia. 

II. 

"\Ye left Montreal, attached to the regular train, on 
the evening of September 22d. The company runs 
six through trains a week, omitting the despatch of a 
train on Sunday from each terminus. The time is six 
days and five nights. We travelled in the private car 
of Mr. T. G. Shaughnessy, the manager, who was on 
a tour of inspection, and took it leisurely, stopping at 
points of interest on the way. The weather was bad, 
rainy and cold, in eastern Canada, as it was all over 
New England, and as it continued to be through Sep- 
tember and October. During our absence there was 
snow both in Montreal and Quebec. We passed out 
of the rain into lovely weather north of Lake Superior; 
encountered rain again at Winnipeg ; but a hundred 
miles west of there, on the prairie, we were blessed 
with as delightful weather as the globe can furnish, 
which continued all through the remainder of the trip 
until our return to Montreal, October 12th. The 
climate just east of the Rocky Mountains was a little 
warmer than was needed for comfort (at the time On- 
tario and Quebec had snow), but the air was always 
pure and exhilarating; and all through the mountains 



Comments on Canada. 433 

we had the perfection of lovely days. On the Pacific 
it was still the dry season, though the autumn rains, 
which continue all winter, with scarcely any snow, 
were not far off. For mere physical pleasure of liv- 
ing and breathing, I know no atmosphere superior to 
that we encountered on the rolling lands east of the 
Rockies. 

Between Ottawa and Winnipeg (from midnight of 
the 22d till the morning of the 25th) there is not 
much to interest the tourist, unless he is engaged in 
lumbering or mining. What we saw was mainly a 
monotonous wilderness of rocks and small poplars, 
though the country has agricultural capacities after 
leaving Rat Portage (north of Lake of the Woods), 
just before coming upon the Manitoba prairies. There 
were more new villages and greater crowds of people 
at the stations than I expected. From Sudbury the 
company runs a line to the Sault Sainte Marie to con- 
nect with lines it controls to Duluth and St. Paul. 
At Port Arthur and Fort William is evidence of 
great transportation activity, and all along the Lake 
Superior Division there are signs that the expecta- 
tions of profitable business in lumber and minerals 
will be realized. At Port Arthur we strike the 
Western Division. On the Western, Mountain, and 
Pacific divisions the company has adopted the 24- 
hour system, by which a.m. and p.m. are abolished, 
and the hours from noon till midnight are counted 
as from 12 to 24 o'clock. For instance, the train 
reaches Eagle River at 24.55, Winnipeg at 9.30, and 
Brandon at 16.10. 

At Winnipeg we come into the real North-west, 
and a condition of soil, climate, and political develop- 
28 



43i Comments on Canada. 

merit as different from eastern Canada as Montana 
is from New England. This town, at tlie junction of 
the Red and Assiniboin rivers, in a valley which is 
one of the finest wheat-producing sections of the world, 
is a very important place. Railways, built and pro- 
jected, radiate from it like spokes from a wheel hub. 
Its growth has been marvellous. Formerly known as 
Fort Garry, the chief post of the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany, it had in 1871 a population of only one hundred. 
It is now the capital of the province of Manitoba, 
contains the chief workshops of the Canadian Pacific 
between Montreal and Vancouver, and has a popula- 
tion of 25,000. It is laid out on a grand scale, with 
very broad streets — Main Street is 200 feet wide — has 
many substantial public and business buildings, street- 
cars, and electric-lights, and abundant facilities for 
trade. At present it is in a condition of subsided 
"boom;" the w^hole province has not more than 120,- 
000 people, and the city for that number is out of pro- 
portion. Winnipeg must w^ait a little for the devel- 
opment of the country. It seems to the people that 
the town would start up again if it had more railroads. 
Among the projects much discussed is a road north- 
ward between Lake Winnipeg and Lake Manitoba, 
turning eastward to York Factory on Hudson's Bay. 
The idea is to reach a short water route to Europe. 
From all the testimony I have read as to ice in Hud- 
son's Bay harbors and in the straits, the short period 
the straits are open, and the nncertainty from year to 
year as to the months they will be open, this route 
seems chimerical. But it does not seem so to its ad- 
vocates, and there is no doubt that a portion of the 
line between the lakes fi^rst named would develop a 



Comments on Canada. 435 

good country and pay. A more important line — in- 
deed, of the first importance — is built for 200 miles 
north-west from Portage la Prairie, destined to go to 
Prince Albert, on the North Saskatchewan. This is 
the Manitoba and North-west, and it makes its con- 
nection from Portage la Prairie with Winnipeg over 
the Canadian Pacific. An antagonism has grown 
up in Manitoba towards the Canadian Pacific. This 
arose from the monopoly privileges enjoyed by it as a 
Dominion road. The province could build no road 
with extra-territorial connections. This monopoly was 
surrendered in consideration of the guarantee spoken 
of from the Government. The people of Winnipeg 
also say that the company discriminated against them 
in the matter of rates, and that the province must 
have a competing outlet. The company says that it 
did not discriminate, but treated Winnipeg like other 
towns on the line, having an eye to the development 
of the whole prairie region, and that the trouble was 
that it refused to discriminate in favor of Winnipeg, 
so that it might become the distributing-point of the 
whole North-west. Whatever the truth may be, the 
province grew increasingly restless, and determined to 
build another road. The Canadian Pacific has two 
lines on either side of the Red River, connecting at 
Emerson and Gretna with the Red River branches of 
the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba. It has also 
two branches running westward south of its main 
line, penetrating the fertile wheat-fields of Manitoba. 
The province graded a third road, paralleling the two 
to the border, and the river, southward from Winnipeg 
to the border connecting there with a branch of the 
Northern Pacific, which was eager to reach the rich 



436 Comments on Canada. 

wheat-iields of the North-west. The provincial Red 
River Railway also proposed to cross the branches of 
the Canadian Pacific, and connect at Portage la Prairie 
with the Manitoba and North-west. The Canadian 
Pacific, which had offered to sell to the province its 
Emerson branch, saying that there was not business 
enough for three parallel routes, insisted upon its legal 
rights and resisted this crossing. Hence the provincial 
and railroad conflict of the fall of 1888. The province 
built the new road, but it was alleged that the North- 
ern Pacific Avas the real party, and that Manitoba has 
so far put itself into the hands of that corporation. 
There can be no doubt that Manitoba v/ill have its 
road and connect the Northern Pacific with the Sas- 
katchewan country, and very likely will parallel the 
main line of the Canadian Pacific. But whether it 
will get from the Northern Pacific the relief it thought 
itself refused by the Canadian, many people in Win- 
nipeg begin to doubt; for however eager rival rail- 
ways may be for new territory, they are apt to come 
to an understanding in order to keep up profitable 
rates. They must live. 

I went down on the southern branch of the Ca- 
nadian Pacific, which runs west, not far from our bor- 
der, as far as Boissevain. It is a magnificent wheat 
country, and already very well settled and sprinkled 
with villages. The whole prairie was covered with 
yellow wheat -stacks, and teams loaded with wheat 
were wending their way from all directions to the ele- 
vators on the line. There has been quite an emigra- 
tion of Russian Mennonites to this region, said to be 
9000 of them. We passed near two of their villages — 
a couple of rows of square unbeautiful houses facing 



Comments on Canada. 437 

each other, with a street of mud between, as we see 
them in pictures of Russian communes. These people 
are a peculiar and somewhat mystical sect, separate 
and unassimilated in habits, customs, and faith from 
their neighbors, but peaceful, industrious, and thrifty. 
I shall have occasion to sj^eak of other peculiar immi- 
gration, encouraged by the governments and by pri- 
vate companies. 

There can be no doubt of the fertility of all the 
prairie region of Manitoba and Assiniboin. Great 
heat is developed in the summers, but cereals are 
liable, as in Dakota, to be touched, as in 1888, by early 
frost. The great drawback from Winnipeg on west- 
ward is the intense cold of winter, regarded not as 
either agreeable or disagreeable, but as a matter of 
economy. The region, by reason of extra expense for 
fuel, clothing, and housing, must always be more ex- 
pensive to live in than, say, Ontario. 

The province of Manitoba is an interesting political 
and social study. It is very unlike Ontario or British 
Columbia. Its development has been, in freedom and 
self-help, very like one of our Western Territories, and 
it is like them in its free, independent spirit. It has 
a spirit to resist any imposed authority. We read of 
the conflicts between the Hudson's Bay and the North- 
western Fur companies and the Selkirk settlers, who 
began to come in in 1812. Gradually the vast terri- 
tory of the North- west had a large number of " free- 
men," independent of any company, and of half-breed 
Frenchmen. Other free settlers sifted in. The terri- 
tory was remote from the Government, and had no 
facilities of communication with the East, even after 
the union. The rebellion of 1870-71 was repeated in 



43S Comments on Canada. 

1885, when Kiel was called back from Montana to head 
the discontented. The settlers coukl not get patents 
for their hands, and they had many grievances, which 
they demanded shoukl be redressed in a '' bill of 
rights." There were aspects of the insnrrcction, not 
connected with the race qnestion, with which manj^ 
well-disposed persons sympathized. But the discon- 
tent became a violent rebellion, and had to be sup- 
pressed. The execution of Kiel, which some of the 
Conservatives thought ill-advised, raised a race storm 
throughout Canada; the French element was in a tu- 
mult, and some of the Liberals made opposition cap- 
ital out of the event. In the province of Quebec it is 
still a deep grievance, for party purposes partly, as 
was shown in the recent election of a federal member 
of Parliament in Montreal. 

Manitoba is Western in its spirit and its sympathies. 
Before the building of the Canadian Pacific its com- 
munication was with Minnesota. Its interests now 
largely lie with its southern neighbors. It has a feel- 
ing of irritation with too much federal dictation, and 
frets under the still somewhat undelined relations of 
power between the federal and the provincial gov- 
ernments, as was seen in the railway conflict. Besides, 
the natural exchange of products between south and 
north — between the lower Mississippi and the Red 
River of the North and the north-west prairies — is 
going to increase; the north and south railway lines 
will have, with the development of industries and ex- 
change of various sorts, a growing importance com- 
pared with the great east and west lines. Nothing 
can stop this exchange and the need of it along our 
whole border west of Lake Superior. It is already 



Comments on Canada. 439 

active and growing, even on the Pacific, between 
Washington Territory and British Columbia. 

For these geographical reasons, and especially on 
account of similarity of social and political develop- 
ment, I was strongly impressed with the notion that 
if the Canadian Pacific Railway had not been built 
when it was, Manitoba w^ould by this time have grav- 
itated to the United States, and it would only have 
been a question of time when the remaining North- 
vrest should have fallen in. The line of the road is 
very well settled, and yellow w^ith wheat westward to 
Regina, but the farms are often off from the line, as 
the railway sections are for the most part still unoc- 
cupied; and there are many thriving villages: Portage 
la Prairie, from which the Manitoba and North-western 
Railway starts north-west, with a population of 3000; 
Brandon, a busy grain mart, standing on a rise of 
ground 1150 feet above the sea, with a population of 
4000 and over ; Qu'Appelle, in the rich valley of the 
river of that name, with 700 ; Regina, the capital of 
the North-west Territory, on a vast plain, with 800; 
Moosejay, a market-tovv^n towards the western limit of 
the settled country, with 600. This is all good land, 
but tlie winters are severe. 

Naturally, on the rail w^e saw little game, except 
ducks and geese on the frequent fresh-water ponds, 
and occasionally coyotes and prairie-dogs. But plenty 
of large game still can be found fartlier north. At 
Stony Mountain, fifteen miles north of Winnipeg, the 
site of the Manitoba penitentiary, we saw a team of 
moose, which Colonel Bedson, the superintendent, 
drives — fleet animals, going easily fifteen miles an 
hour. They were captured only thirty- five miles 



440 Comments on Canada. 

north of the prison, where moose are abundant. Colo- 
nel Bedson has the only large herd of the practically 
extinct buffalo. There are about a hundred of these 
uncouth and picturesque animals, which have a range 
of twenty or thirty miles over the plains, and are 
watched by mounted keepers. They were driven in, 
bulls, cows, and calves, the day before our arrival — it 
seemed odd that we could order up a herd of buffa- 
loes by telephone, but we did — and we saw the whole 
troop lumbering over the prairie, exactly as Ave were 
familiar with them in pictures. The colonel is trying 
the experiment of crossing them Avdth common cattle. 
The result is a half-breed of large size, with heavier 
hind-quarters and less hump than the buffalo, and said 
to be good beef. The penitentiary has taken in all 
the convicts of the North-west Territory, and there 
were only sixty-five of them. The institution is a 
model one in its management. AVe were shown two 
separate chapels — one for Catholics and another for 
Protestants. 

All along the line settlers are sifting in, and there 
are everywhere signs of promoted immigration. Not 
only is Canada making every effort to fill up its lands, 
but England is interested in relieving itself of trouble- 
some people. The experiment has been tried of bring- 
ing out East-Londoners. These barbarians of civiliza- 
tion are about as unfitted for colonists as can be. 
Small bodies of them have been aided to make settle- 
ments, but the trial is not very encouraging ; very 
few of them take to the new life. The Scotch croft- 
ers do better. They are accustomed to labor and 
thrift, and are not a bad addition to the population. 
A company under the management of Sir John Lister 



Comments on Canada. 441 

Kaye is making a larger experiment. It has received 
sections from the Government and bought contigu- 
ous sections from the railway, so as to have large 
blocks of land on the road. A dozen settlements are 
projected. The company brings over laborers and 
farmers, paying their expenses and wages for a year. 
A large central house is built on each block, tools and 
cattle are supplied, and the men are to begin the cul- 
tivation of the soil. At the end of a year they may, 
if they choose, take up adjacent free Government land 
and begin to make homes for themselves, working 
meantime on the company land, if they will. By this 
j^lan they are guaranteed support for a year at least, 
and a chance to set up for themselves. The company 
secures the breaking up of its land and a crop, and the 
nucleus of a towm. The further plan is to encourage 
farmers, with a capital of a thousand dollars, to fol- 
low and settle in the neighborhood. There will then 
be three ranks — the large company proprietors, the 
farmers with some capital, and the laborers who are 
earning their capital. We saw some of these settle- 
ments on the line that looked promising. About 150 
settlers, mostly men, arrived last fall, and with them 
were sent out English tools and English cattle. The 
plan looks to making model communities, on some- 
thing of the old-world plan of proprietor, farmer, and 
laborer. It would not work in the United States. 

Another important colonization is that of Iceland- 
ers. These are settled to the north-east of Winnipeg 
and in southern Manitoba. About 10,000 have al- 
ready come over, and the movement has assumed such 
large proportions that it threatens to depopulate Ice- 
land. This is good and intelligent material. Climate 



4i2 Comments on Canada. 

and soil are so siii^erior to that of Iceland that the 
emigrants are well content. They make good farmers, 
but they are not so clannish as the Mennonites; many 
of them scatter about in the towns as laborers. 

Before we reached Medicine Hat, and beyond that 
place, we passed through considerable alkaline countr}^ 
— little dried-up lakes looking like patches of snow. 
There was an idea that this land was not fertile. The 
Canadian Pacific Company have been making several 
experiments on the line of model farms, which prove 
the contrary. As soon as the land is broken up and 
the crust turned under, the soil becomes very fertile, 
and produces excellent crops of wheat and vegetables. 

Medicine Hat, on a branch of the South Saskatche- 
wan, is a thriving town. Here are a station and bar- 
racks of the Mounted Police, a picturesque body of 
civil cavalry in blue pantaloons and red jackets. This 
body of picked men, numbering about a thousand, and 
similar in functions to the Guarcla Civil of Spain, are 
scattered through the North-west Territory, and are the 
Dominion police for keeping in order the Indians, and 
settling disputes between the Indians and whites. The 
sergeants have powers of police-justices, and the or- 
ganization is altogether an admirable one for the pur- 
pose, and has a fine esjyrit de corps. 

Here we saw many Cree Indians, physically a cred- 
itable-looking race of men and women, and picturesque 
in their gay blankets and red and yellow paint daubed 
on the skin without the least attempt at shading or 
artistic effect. A fair was going on, an exhibition 
of horses, cattle, and vegetable and cereal products of 
the region. The vegetables were large and of good 
quality. Delicate flowers were still blooming (Sep- 



Comments on Canada. 443 

tember 28tli) untouched by frost in the gardens. These 
Crees are not on a reservation. They cultivate the 
soil a little, but mainly support themselves by gather- 
ing and selling buffalo bones, and well set-up and pol- 
ished horns of cattle, which they swear are buffalo. 
The women are far from a degraded race in appear- 
ance, have good heads, high foreheads, and are well- 
favored. As to morals, they are reputed not to equal 
the Blackfeet. 

The same day we reached Gleichen, about 2500 
feet above the sea. The land is rolling, and all good 
for grazing and the j^lough. This region gets the 
"Chinook" wind. Ploughing is begun in April, 
sometimes in March; in 1888 they ploughed in Janu- 
ary. Flurries of snow may be expected any time after 
October 1st, but frost is not so early as in eastern 
Canada. A fine autumn is common, and fine, mild 
weather may continue up to December. At Dun- 
more, tlie station before Medicine Hat, we passed a 
branch railway running west to the great Lethbridge 
coal-mines, and Dunmore Station is a large coal depot. 

The morning at Gleichen was splendid ; cool at 
sunrise, but no frost. Here we had our first view of 
the Rockies, a long range of snow-peaks on the hori- 
zon, 120 miles distant. There is an immense fascina- 
tion in this rolling country, the exhilarating air, and 
the magnificent mountains in the distance. Here is 
the beginning of a reservation of the Blackfeet, near 
3000. They live h^ere on the Bow River, and culti- 
vate the soil to a considerable extent, and have the 
benefit of a mission and two schools. They are the 
best-looking race of Indians we have seen, and have 
most self-respect. 



444 Comjucnts on Canada. 

We Avcnt over a rolling count rv to Calgaiy, at an 
altitude of 33 88 feet, a place of some 3000 inhabitants, 
and of the most distinction of all between Brandon 
and Vancouver. On the way we passed two stations 
where natural gas was used, the boring for which was 
only about 600 feet. The country is underlaid with coal. 
Calgary is delightfully situated at the junction of the 
Bow and Elbow rivers, rapid streams as clear as crys- 
tal, with a greenish hue, on a small plateau, surround- 
ed by low hills and overlooked by the still distant 
snow-peaks. The town has many good shops, several 
churches, two newspapers, and many fanciful cottages. 
Wo drove several miles out on the McCloud trail, up 
a lovely valley, with good farms, growing wheat and 
oats, and the splendid mountains in the distance. The 
day was superb, the thermometer marking 70°. This 
is, however, a ranch country, wheat being an uncertain 
crop, owing to summer frosts. But some years, like 
1888, are o:ood for all o-rains and veo-etables. A few 
Sarcee Indians were loafing about here, inferior sav- 
ages. Much better are the Ston)^ Indians, who are 
settled and work the soil beyond Calgary, and arc 
very well cared for by a Protestant mission. 

Some of the Indian tribes of Canada are self-sup- 
porting. This is true of many of the Siwash and oth- 
er west coast tribes, who live by fishing. At Lytton, 
on the upper Fraser, I saw a village of the Siwash 
civilized enough to live in houses, wear our dress, and 
earn their living by working on the railway, fishing, 
etc. The Indians have done a good deal of work on 
the railway, and many of them are still employed on 
it. The coast Indians are a different race from the 
plains Indians, and have a marked resemblance to the 



Comments on Canada. 445 

Chinese and Japanese. Tlie polished carvings in 
black slate of the Ilaida Indians bear a striking re- 
semblance to archaic Mexican work, and strengthen 
the theory that the coast Indians crossed tlie sti*aits 
from Asia, are related to the early occupiers of Ari- 
zona and Mexico, and ought not to be classed with 
the North American Indian. The Dominion has done 
very well by its Indians, of whom it has probably a 
hundred thousand. It has tried to civilize them by 
means of schools, missions, and farm instructors, and 
it has been pretty successful in keeping ardent spirits 
away from them. A large proportion of them are 
still fed and clothed by the Government. It is doubt- 
ful if the plains Indians will ever be industrious. The 
Indian fund from the sale of their lands has accumu- 
lated to 83,000,000. There are 140 teachers and 4000 
pupils in school. In 1885 the total expenditure on 
the Indian population, beyond that provided by the 
Indian fund, was $1,109,604, of which 8478,038 was 
expended for provisions for destitute Indians. 

At Cochrane's we were getting wx^ll into the hills. 
Here is a large horse and sheep ranch and a very ex- 
tensive range. North and south along the foot-hills 
is fine grazing and ranging country. We enter the 
mountains by the Bow River Valley, and plunge at 
once into splendid scenery, bare mountains rising on 
both sides in sharp, varied, and fantastic peaks, snow- 
dusted, and in lateral openings assemblages of giant 
summits of rock and ice. The change from the rolling 
prairie was magical. At Mountain House the Three 
Sisters were very impressive. Late in the afternoon 
we came to Banff. 

Banff will have a unique reputation among the re- 



446 Comments on Canada. 

sorts of tbe world. If a judicious plan is formed and 
adhered to for the development of its extraordinary- 
beauties and grandeur, it will be second to few in at- 
tractions. A considerable tract of wilderness about 
it is reserved as a National Park, and the whole ought 
to be developed by some master landscape expert. It 
is in the power of the Government and of the Canadian 
Pacific Company to so manage its already famous 
curative hot sulphur springs as to make Banff the re- 
sort of invalids as w^ell as pleasure-seekers the year 
round. This is to be done not simply by established 
good bathing-places, but by regulations and restric- 
tions such as give to the German baths their virtue. 

The Banff Hotel, unsurpassed in situation, amid 
magnificent mountains, is large, picturesque, many 
gabled and windowed, and thoroughly comfortable. 
It looks down upon the meeting of the Bow and the 
Spray, which spread in a pretty valley closed by a 
range of snow-j^eaks. To right and left rise mount- 
ains of savage rock ten thousand feet high. The 
whole scene lias all the elements of beauty and gran- 
deur. The place is attractive for its climate, its baths, 
and excellent hunting and fishing. 

For two days, travelling only by day, passing the 
Rockies, the Selkirks, and the Gold range, we were 
kept in a state of intense excitement, in a constant ex- 
clamation of wonder and delight. I would advise no 
one to attempt to take it in the time we did. Nobody 
could sit through Beethoven's nine symphonies played 
continuously. I have no doubt that when carriage-roads 
and foot-paths are made into the mountain recesses, 
as they will be, and little hotels are established in the 
valleys and in the passes and advantageous sites, as in 



Comments on Canada. 447 

Switzerland, this region will rival the Alpine resorts. 
I can speak of two or three things only. 

The highest point on the line is the station at Mount 
Stephen, 5296 feet above the sea. The mountain, a 
bald mass of rock in a rounded cone, rises about 8000 
feet above this. As we moved away from it the mount- 
ain was hidden by a huge wooded intervening mount- 
ain. The train was speeding rapidly on the down 
grade, carrying us away from the base, and we stood 
upon the rear platform watching the apparent reces- 
sion of the great mass, when suddenly, and yet de- 
liberately, the vast white bulk of Mount Stephen began 
to rise over the intervening summit in the blue sky, 
lifting itself up by a steady motion while one could 
count twenty, until its magnificence stood revealed. 
It was like a transformation in a theatre, only the cur- 
tain here was lowered instead of raised. The surprise 
was almost too much for the nerves; the whole com- 
pany was awe-stricken. It is too much to say that 
the mountain "shot up;" it rose with conscious gran- 
deur and power. The effect, of course, depends much 
upon the speed of the train. I have never seen any- 
thing' to compare with it for awakening the emotion 
of surprise and wonder. 

The station of Field, just beyond Mount Stephen, 
where there is a charming hotel, is in the midst of 
wonderful mountain and glacier scenery, and would be 
a delightful place for rest. From there the descent 
down the canon of Kickinghorse River, along the edge 
of precipices, among the snow-monarchs, is very ex- 
citing. At Golden we come to the valley of the Co- 
lumbia River and in view of the Selkirks. The river 
is navigable about a hundred miles above Golden, and 



44:8 Comments on Canada. 

this is the way to the raining district of the Kootenay 
Valley. The region abounds in gold and silver. The 
broad Columbia runs north here until it breaks through 
the Selkirks, and then turns southward on the west 
side of that range. 

The railway follows down the river, between the 
splendid ranges of the Selkirks and the Rockies, to the 
mouth of the Beaver, and then ascends its narrow gorge. 
I am not sure but that the scenery of the Selkirks is 
finer than that of the Rockies. One is bewildered by 
the illimitable noble snow-peaks and great glaciers. 
At Glacier House is another excellent hotel. In sav- 
age grandeur, nobility of mountain-peaks, snow-ranges, 
and extent of glacier it rivals anything in Switzerland. 
The glacier, only one arm of which is seen from the 
road, is, I believe, larger than any in Switzerland. 
There are some thirteen miles of flowing ice; but the 
monster lies up in the mountains, like a great octopus, 
with many giant arms. The branch which we saw, 
overlooked by the striking snow-cone of Sir Donald, 
some two and a half miles from the hotel, is immense 
in thickness and breadth, and seems to pour out of the 
sky. Recent measurements show that it is moving at 
the rate of twenty inches in twenty-four hours — about 
the rate of progress of the Mer de Glace. In the midst 
of the main body, higher up, is an isolated mountain 
of pure ice three hundred feet high and nearly a quar- 
ter of a mile in length. These mountains are the home 
of the mountain sheep. 

From this amphitheatre of giant peaks, snow, and 
glaciers we drop by marvellous loops — wonderful en- 
gineering, four apparently different tracks in sight 
at one time — down to the valley of the Illicilliweat, 



Comments on Canada. 449 

the lower part of which is fertile, and blooming with 
irrigated farms. We pass a cluster of four lovely 
lakes, and coast around the great Shuswap Lake, which 
is fifty miles long. But the traveller is not out of ex- 
citement. The ride down the Thompson and Fraser 
caiions is as amazing almost as anything on the line. 
At Spence's Bridge we come to the old Government 
road to the Cariboo gold-mines, three hundred miles 
above. This region has been for a long time a scene 
of activity in mining and salmon-fishing. It may be 
said generally of the Coast or Gold range that its 
riches have yet to be developed. The villages all 
along these mountain slopes and valleys are waiting 
for this development. 

The city of Vancouver, only two years old since 
the beginnings of a town Avcre devoured by fire, is 
already an interesting place of seven to eight thousand 
inhabitants, fast building up, and with many substan- 
tial granite and brick buildings, and spreading over a 
large area. It lies upon a high point of land between 
Burrard Inlet on the north and the north arm of the 
Fraser River. The inner harbor is deep and spacious. 
Burrard Inlet entrance is narrow but deep, and opens 
into English Bay, which opens into Georgia Sound, 
that separates the island of Vancouver, three hundred 
miles long, from the main-land. The round headland 
south of the entrance is set apart for a public park, 
called now Stanley Park, and is being improved with 
excellent driving-roads, which give charming views. 
It is a tangled wilderness of nearly one thousand acres. 
So dense is the undergrowth, in this moist air, of vines, 
ferns, and small shrubs, tliat it looks like a tropical 
thicket. But in the midst of it are gigantic Douglas 
29 



450 Comments on Canada. 

firs and a few noble cedars. One veteran cedar, part- 
ly decayed at the top, measured fifty-six feet in cir- 
cumference, and another, in full vigor and of gigantic 
height, over thirty-nine feet. The hotel of the Cana- 
dian Pacific Company, a beautiful building in modern 
style, is, in point of comfort, elegance of appointment, 
abundant table, and service, not excelled by anj'" in 
Canada, equalled by few anywhere. 

Vancouver would be a very busy and promising city 
merely as the railway terminus and the shipping-point 
for Japan and China and the east generally. But it 
has other resources of growth. There is a very good 
country back of it, and south of it all the way into 
Washington Territory. Kew Westminster, twelve 
miles south, is a place of importance for fish and lum- 
ber. The immensely fertile alluvial bottoms of the 
Fraser, which now overflows its banks, will some day 
be diked, and become exceedingly valuable. Its rela- 
tions to Washington Territory are already close. The 
very thriving city of Seattle, having a disagreement 
with the North Pacific and its rival, Tacoma, sends 
and receives most of its freight and passengers via 
Vancouver, and is already pushing forward a railway 
to that point. It is also building to Spokane Falls, 
expecting some time to be met by an extension of the 
St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba from the Great 
Falls of the Missouri. I found that many of the emi- 
grants in the loaded trains that we travelled with or 
that passed us were bound to Washington Territory. 
It is an acknowledged fact that there is a constant 
"leakage" of emigrants, who had apparently promised 
to tarry in Canada, into United States territories. 
Some of them, disappointed of the easy wealth ex- 



Comments on Canada. 451 

pected, no doubt return; but the. name of "republic" 
seems to have an attraction for Old World people 
when they are once set adrift. 

We took steamer one afternoon for a five hours' 
sail to Victoria. A part of the way is among beauti- 
ful wooded islands. Once out in the open, we had a 
view of our " native land," and prominent in it the dim, 
cloud-like, gigantic peak of Mount Baker. Before we 
passed the islands we were entertained by a rare show 
of right-whales. A school of them a couple of weeks 
before had come down through Behring Strait, and pur- 
sued a shoal of fish into this landlocked bay. There 
must have been as many as fifty of the monsters in 
sight, spouting up slender fountains, lifting their huge 
bulk out of water, and diving, with their bifurcated 
tails waving in the air. They played about like por- 
poises, apparently only for our entertainment. 

Victoria, so long isolated, is the most English part 
of Canada. The town itself does not want solidity 
and wealth, but it is stationary, and, the Canadians 
elsewhere think, slow. It was the dry and dusty time 
of the year. The environs are broken with inlets, 
hilly and picturesque; there are many pretty cottages 
and country places in the suburbs; and one visits with 
interest the Eskimalt naval station, and the elevated 
Park, which has a noble coast view. The very mild 
climate is favorable for grapes and apples. The sum- 
mer is delightful ; the winter damp, and constantly 
rainy. And this may be said of all this coast. Of the 
thirteen thousand population six thousand are Chinese, 
and they form in the city a dense, insoluble, unassimi- 
lating mass. Victoria has one railway, that to the pros- 
perous Nanaimo coal-mines. The island has abundance 



452 Comments on Canada. 

of coal, some copper, and timber. But Vancouver has 
taken away from Victoria all its importance as a port. 
The Government and Parliament buildings are de- 
tached, but pleasant and commodious edifices. There 
is a decorous British air about everj^thing. Through- 
out British Columbia the judges and the lawyers wear 
the gown and band and the horse -hair wig. In an 
evening trial for murder which I attended in a dingy 
upper chamber of the Kamloops court-house, lighted 
only by kerosene lamps, the wigs and gowns of judge 
and attorneys lent, I confess, a dignity to the adminis- 
tration of justice which the kerosene lamps could not 
have given. In one of the Government buildings is a 
capital museum of natural history and geology. The 
educational department is vigorous and effective, and 
I find in the bulky report evidence of most intelligent 
management of the schools. 

It is only by traversing the long distance to this 
coast, and seeing the activity here, that one can ap- 
preciate the importance to Canada and to the British 
Empire of the Canadian Pacific Railway as a bond of 
unity, a developer of resources, and a world's highway. 
The out-going steamers were crowded with passengers 
and laden with freight. We met on the way two solid 
trains, of twenty cars each, full of tea. AVhen the new 
swift steamers are put on, which are already heavily 
subsidized by both the English and the Canadian gov- 
ernments, the traffic in passengers and goods must in- 
crease. What effect the possession of such a certain line 
of communication with her Oriental domains will have 
upon the English willingness to surrender Canada ei- 
ther to complete independence or to a union with the 
United States, any political prophet can estimate. 



Comments on Canada. 453 

It must be added that the Canadian" Pacific Com- 
pany are doing everything to make this highway pop- 
ular as well as profitable. Construction and manage- 
ment show English regard for comfort and safety and 
order. It is one of the most agreeable lines to travel 
over I am acquainted with. Most of it is well built, 
and defects are being energetically removed. The 
" Colonist " cars are clean and convenient. The first 
class carriages are luxurious. The dining-room cars 
are uniformly well kej^t, the company hotels are ex- 
ceptionally excellent; and from the railway servants 
one meets with civility and attention, 

III. 

I HAD been told that the Canadians are second-hand 
Englishmen. No estimate could convey a more erro- 
neous impression. A portion of the people have strong 
English traditions and loyalties to institutions, but in 
manner and in expectations the Canadians are scarce- 
ly more English than the people of the United States; 
they have their own colonial development, and one can 
mark already with tolerable distinctness a Canadian 
type which is neither English nor American. This is 
noticeable especially in the women. The Canadian girl 
resembles the American in escape from a purely con- 
ventional restraint and in self-reliance, and she has, 
like the English, a well-modulated voice and distinct 
articulation. In the cities, also, she has taste in dress 
and a certain style which we think belongs to the New 
\Yorld. In features and action a certain modification 
has gone on, due partly to climate and partly to great- 
er social independence. It is unnecessary to make com- 



4c4 Cbrntmemti oj» Gmadm. 

paii^^ns, and I only note that tber? is a CanawKam type 
of woman. 

Bat theiv is great Tariety in Canada, and in fact a 
remarkable lacial diTersdty. The man of Xova Scotia 
is not at all tlie man of Briiisli Columbia or ManitolwL 
The Scotch in old Canada hare made a distinct im- 
pression in features and speech. And it may be said 
generally in eastern Canada that the Scotch element 
is a leading and conspicuous one in the vigor and push 
of enterprise and the accumulation of fortune. The 
Canadian men, as one sees them in official lite, at the 
clubs, in business, are markedly a vigorous, stalwart 
race, well made, of good stature, and not seldom hand- 
some. This physical prosperity needs to be i>Mnem- 
beivd when we consider the rigorous climate and the 
long winters ; these seem to have at least one aclvan- 
tage — that of biveding virile men. The Canadians 
generally are fond of out -door sports and athletic 
games, of fishing and hunting, and they give more 
time to such recreations than we do. They are a lit- 
tle less driven by the business goad. Abiindar.: v 
mal spirits tend to make men gvx^d-natured and 1 :: . 
quarrelsome. The Canadians would make good sol- 
diers. There was a time when the drinking habit 
penrailevl very much in Canada, and thei>e are still 
places where they do not put water enough in their 
grc^g, but temperance reform has taken as strong a 
hold there as it has in the Unitovi States. 

The feeling about the English is illustrated by the 
statement that there is not more aping of English ways 
in Montreal and Toronto clubs and social life than in 
Xew York, and that the English supetTcilioiisness, or 
cv^ndescension as to colonists, the nltni-Eiiirlish man- 



ner, is ridioulovi in Caiiavla.and n^seiitod with ovoii more 
\r;armth tiiau in iho United States, Tiie amusing sto- 
ries of English presnmption upon hospitality are cur- 
rent in Canada as well as on this side. All this is not 
inconsistent with pride in the empire, loyalty to its 
traditions and institutions, and even a considerable 
willingness (for human nature is pretty much alike 
ererywher^) to accept decorative titles. But the un- 
derlying fact is that there is a distinct feeling of na- 
tionality, and it is increasing. 

There is not anywhere so great a contrast between 
neighboring cities as; between Quebec, Montreal, and 
Toronto. Quebec is median-al, Toronto is modem, 
Montreal is in a conflict between the two conditions. 
As the tra Telling world knows;, they are all interestinij 
cities and have peculiar attract ions. Quebec is French, 
more decidedly so than Toronto is English, and in Mon- 
treal the French have a large numerie^U majority and 
complete political control. In the Canadian cities gen- 
erally municipal affairs are pretty much divoreed from 
general party politics, greatly to the advantage of good 
city government. 

Montreal has most wealth, and from its splendid 
geographical position it is the railway centre, and has 
the business and commereial primacy; It has grown 
rapidly from a population of 140.000 in 1 SSI to a pop- 
ulation of over i^OO.OOO — estimated, with its suburl^ 
at 250,0i'0. Were it part of my plan to describe these 
cities, I should need much space to devote to the fin- 
est public buildings and public institutions of Mon- 
treal, the handsome streets in the Protestant quarter, 
with their solid, tasteful, and often elegant residences, 
the many churches, and the almost unequalled posses- 



456 Comments on Canada. 

sion of tlie Mountain as a park and resort, where one 
has the most striking and varied prospects in the world. 
Montreal, being a part of the province of Quebec, is 
not only under provincial control of the government 
at Quebec, but it is ruled by the same French party 
in the city, and there is the complaint always found 
where the poorer majority taxes the richer and more 
enterprising minority out of proportion to the benefits 
the latter receives. Various occasions have produced 
something like race conflicts in the city, and there are 
prophesies of more serious ones in the strife for ascen- 
dency. The seriousness of this to the minority lies in 
the fact that the French race is more prolific than any 
other in the province. 

Perhaps nothing will surprise the visitor more than 
the persistence of the French type in Canada, and nat- 
urally its aggressiveness. Guaranteed their religion, 
laws, and language, the French have not only failed to 
assimilate, but have had hopes — maybe still have — of 
making Canada French. The French " national " par- 
ty means simply a French consolidation, and has no 
relation to the " nationalism " of Sir John Macdonald. 
So far as the Church and the French politicians are 
concerned, the effort is to keep the French solid as a 
political force, and whether the French are Liberal or 
Conservative, this is the underlying thought. The 
province of Quebec is Liberal, but the liberalism is of 
a different hue from that of Ontario. The French 
recognize the truth that language is so integral a part 
of a people's growth that the individuality of a people 
depends upon maintaining it. The French have es- 
caped absorption in Canada mainly by loyalty to their 
native tongue, aided bv the concession to them of their 



Comments on Canada. 457 

civil laws and their religions privileges. They owe this 
to William Pitt. I quote from a contributed essay in 
the Toronto WeeJc about three years ago: "Up to 1791 
the small French population of Canada was in a posi- 
tion to be converted into an English colony with traces 
of French sentiment and language, which would have 
slowly disappeared. But at that date William Pitt 
the younger brought into the House of Commons two 
Quebec Acts, which constituted two provinces — Lower 
Canada, with a full provision of French laws, language, 
and institutions; Upper Canada, with a reproduction 
of English laws and social system. During the de- 
bate Pitt declared on the floor of the House that his 
purpose was to create two colonies distinct from and 
jealous of each other, so as to guard against a repeti- 
tion of the late unhappy rebellion which had separated 
the thirteen colonies from the empire." 

The French have always been loyal to the English 
connection under all temptations, for these guarantees 
have been continued, which could scarcely be expected 
from any other power, and certainly not in a legislat- 
ive union of the Canadian provinces. In literature 
and sentiment the connection is Avith France; in re- 
ligion, with Rome ; in politics England has been the 
guarantee of both. There will be no prevailing sen- 
timent in favor of annexation to the United States so 
long as the Church retains its authority, nor would it 
be favored by the accomplished politicians so long as 
they can use the solid French mass as a political force. 

The relegation of the subject of education entirely 
to the provinces is an element in the persistence of the 
French type in the province of Quebec, in the same 
way that it strengthens the Protestant cause in On- 



458 Comments on Canada. 

tario. In the province of Quebec all the public schools 
are Roman Catholic, and the separate schools are of 
other sects. In the council of public instruction the 
Catholics, of course, have a large inajorit}^ but the 
public schools are managed by a Catholic committee 
and the others by a Protestant committee. In the 
academies, model and high schools, subsidized by the 
Government, those having Protestant teachers are in- 
significant in number, and there are very few Prot- 
estants in Catholic schools, and very few Catholics in 
Protestant schools; the same is true of the schools of 
this class not subsidized. The bulky report of the 
superintendent of public instruction of the province 
of Quebec (which is translated into English) shows a 
vigorous and intelligent attention to education. The 
general statistics give the number of pupils in the 
province as 219,403 Roman Catholics (the term always 
used in the report) and 37,484 Protestants. In the 
elementary schools there are 143,848 Roman Catholics 
and 30,461 Protestants. Of the ecclesiastical teachers, 
868 are Roman Catholics and 8 Protestants; of the 
certificated lay teachers, 256 are Roman Catholic and 
105 Protestant; the proportion of schools is four to 
one. It must be kept in mind that in the French 
schools it is French literature that is cultivated. In 
the Laval University, at Quebec, Englisli literature is 
as purely an ornamental study as French literature 
would be in Yale. The Laval University, which has 
a branch in Montreal, is a strong institution, with de- 
partments of divinity, law, medicine, and the arts, 80 
professors, and 575 students. The institution has a 
vast pile of buildings, one of the most conspicuous ob- 
jects in a view of the city. Besides spacious lecture, 



Comments on Canada, 459 

assembly rooms, and laboratories, it has extensive col- 
lections in geology, mineralogy, botany, ethnology, 
zoology, coins, a library of 100,000 volumes, in which 
theology is well represented, but which contains a 
large collection of works on Canada, including valua- 
ble manuscripts, the original MS. of the Journal des 
Jesuites, and the most complete set of the Helation 
des Jesuites existing in America. It has also a gallery 
of paintings, chiefly valuable for its portraits. 

Of the 62,000 population of Quebec City, by the 
census of 1881, not over 6000 were Protestants. By 
the same census Montreal had 140,747, of whom 78,684 
were French, and 28,995 of Irish origin. The Roman 
Catholics numbered 103,579. I believe the proportion 
has not much changed with the considerable growth 
in seven years. 

One is struck, in looking at the religious statistics 
of Canada, by the fact that the Church of England 
has not the primacy, and that the so-called indepen- 
dent sects have a position they have not in England. 
In the total poj^ulation of 4,324,810, given by tlie cen- 
sus of 1881, the Protestants were put down at 2,436,- 
554 and the Roman Catholics at 1,791,982. The larger 
of the Protestant denominations were, Methodists, 
742,981; Presbyterians, 676,165; Church of England, 
574,818; Baptists, 296,525. Taking as a specimen of 
the north-west the province of Manitoba, census of 
1886, we get these statistics of the larger sects: Pres- 
byterians, 28,406; Church of England, 23,206; Meth- 
odists, 18,648; Roman Catholics, 14,651; Mennonites, 
9112; Baptists, 3296; Lutherans, 3131. 

Some statistics of general education in the Dominion 
show the popular interest in the matter. In 1885 the 



460 Comments on Canada. 

total number of pupils in the Dominion, in public and 
private schools, was 968,193, and the average attend- 
ance was 555,404. The total expenditure of the year, 
not including school buildings, was 89,310,745, and the 
value of school lands, buildijigs, and furniture w^as 
$25,000,000. Yet in the province of Quebec, out of 
the total expenditure of $3,162,416, only $353,677 was 
granted by the provincial Legislature. And in On- 
tario, of the total of $3,904,797, only $267,084 was 
granted by tlie Legislature. 

The McGill University at Montreal, Sir William 
Dawson principal, is a corporation organized under 
royal charter, which owes its original endow^ment of 
land and money (valued at $120,000) to James McGill. 
It receives small grants from the provincial and Do- 
minion governments, but mainly depends upon its 
own funds, which in 1885 stood at $791,000. It has 
numerous endowed professorships and endowments for 
scholarships and prizes; among them is the Donalda 
Endowment for the Higher Education of Women 
(from Sir Donald A. Smith), b}^ which a special course 
in separate classes, by University professors, is main- 
tained in the University buildings for women. It has 
faculties of arts, applied sciences, law, and medicine 
— the latter with one of the most complete anatomical 
museums and one of the best selected libraries on the 
continent. It has several colleges affiliated with it for 
the purpose of conferring University degrees, a model 
school, and four theological colleges, a Congregational, 
a Presbyterian, an Episcopalian, and a Wesleyan, the 
students in which may suj^plement their own courses 
in the University. The professors and students wear 
the University cap and gown, and morning prayers are 



Comments on Canada. 461 

read to a voluntary attendance. The Redpath Mu- 
seum, of geology, mineralog}^, zoology, and ethnology, 
has a distinction among museums not only for the size 
of the collection, but for splendid arrangement and 
classification. The well-selected library numbers about 
30,000 volumes. TJie whole University is a vigorous 
educational centre, and its well-planted grounds and 
fine buildings are an ornament to the city. 

Returning to the French element, its influence is 
not only felt in the province of Quebec, but in the 
Dominion. The laws of the Dominion and the pro- 
ceedings are published in French and English ; the 
debates in the Dominion Parliament are conducted in- 
differently in both languages, although it is observed 
that as the five years of any Parliament go on English 
is more and more used by the members, for the French 
are more likely to learn English than the English are 
to learn French. Of course the Quebec Parliament is 
even more distinctly French. And the power of the 
Roman Catholic Church is pretty much co-extensive 
with the language. The system of tithes is legal in 
provincial law, and tithes can be collected of all Ro- 
man Catholics by law. The Church has also what is 
called the fabrique system; that is, a method of raising 
contributions from any district for churches, priests' 
houses, and conventual buildings and schools. The 
tithes and the fabrique assessments make a heavy bur- 
den on the peasants. The traveller down the St. Law- 
rence sees how the interests of religion are emphasized 
in the large churches raised in the midst of humble 
villages, and in the great Church establishments of 
charity and instruction. It is said that the farmers 
attempted to escape the tithe on cereals by changing 



462 Comments on Canada. 

to the cultivation of pease, but the Church then decided 
that pease were cereals. There is no doubt that the 
French population are devout, and that they support 
the Church in proportion to their devotion, and that 
much which seems to the Protestants extortion on the 
part of the Church is a voluntary contribution. Still 
the fact remains that the burden is heavy on land that 
is too cold for the highest productiveness. The desire 
to better themselves in wages, and perhaps to escape 
burdens, sends a great many French to New England. 
Some of them earn money, and return to settle in the 
land that is dear by tradition and a thousand associa- 
tions. Many do not return, and I suppose there are 
over three-quarters of a million of French Canadians 
now in New England. They go to better themselves, 
exactly as New Englanders leave their homes for more 
productive farms in the West. The Church, of course, 
does not encourage this emigration, but does encour- 
age the acquisition of lands in Ontario or elsewhere 
in Canada. And there has been recently a marked 
increase of French in Ontario — so marked that the 
French representation in the Ontario Parliament will 
be increased probably by three members in the next 
election. There are many people in Canada who are 
seriously alarmed at this increase of the French and 
of the Roman Catholic power. Others look upon this 
fear as idle, and say that immigration is sure to make 
the Protestant element overwhelming. It is to be 
noted also that Ontario furnishes Protestant emigrants 
to the United States in large numbers. It may be 
that the interchange of ideas caused by the French 
emigration to New England will be an important 
make-weight in favor of annexation. Individuals, and 



Comments on Canada. 463 

even French newspapers, are found to advocate it. 
But these are at present only surface indications. The 
political leaders, the Church, and the mass of the peo- 
ple are fairly content with things as they are, and with 
the provincial autonomy, although they resent federal 
vetoes, and still make a " cry " of the Kiel execution. 
The French element in Canada may be considered 
from other points of view. The contribution of ro- 
mance and tradition is not an unimportant one in any 
nation. The French in Canada have never broken 
with their past, as the French in France have. There 
is a great charm about Quebec — its language, its 
social life, the military remains of the last century. 
It is a Protestant writer who speaks of the volume 
and wealth of the French Canadian literature as too 
little known to English-speaking Canada. And it is 
true that literary men have not realized the richness 
of the French material, nor the work accomplished by 
French writers in history, poetry, essays, and ro- 
mances. Quebec itself is at a commercial stand-still, 
but its uniquely beautiful situation, its history, and 
the projection of mediaevalism into existing institutions 
make it one of the most interesting places to the 
tourist on the continent. The conspicuous, noble, and 
commodious Parliament building is almost the only 
one of consequence that speaks of the modern spirit. 
It was the remark of a high Church dignitary that the 
object of the French in Canada was the promotion of 
religion, and the object of the English, commerce. We 
cannot overlook this attitude against materialism. In 
the French schools and universities religion is not 
divorced from education. And even in the highest 
education, where modern science has a large place. 



4:64: Comments o?i Canada. 

what we may call the literary side is very much em- 
phasized. Indeed, the French students are rather in- 
clined to rhetoric, and in public life the French are 
distinguished for the graces and charm of oratory. 
It may be true, as charged, that the public schools of 
Quebec province, especially in the country, giving 
special attention to the interest the Church regards 
as the highest, do little to remove the ignorance of 
the French peasant. It is our belief that the best 
Christianity is the most intelligent. Yet there is 
matter for consideration with all thoughtful men what 
sort of society we shall ultimately have in States 
where the common schools have neither relio'ious nor 

CD 

ethical teaching. 

Ottawa is a creation of the Federal Government as 
distinctly as Washington is. Tlie lumber-mills on the 
Chaudiere Falls necessitate a considerable town here, 
for this industry assumes gigantic proportions, but the 
beauty and attraction of the city are due to the con- 
centration here of political interest. The situation on 
the bluffs of the Ottawa River is commanding, and 
gives fine opportunity for architectural display. The 
group of Government buildings is surpassingly^ fine. 
The Parliament House and the department buildings 
on three sides of a square are exceedingly effective 
in color and in the perfection of Gothic details, espe- 
cially in the noble towers. There are few groups of 
buildings anywhere so pleasing to the eye, or that ap- 
peal more strongly to one's sense of dignity and 
beauty. The library attached to the Parliament 
House in the rear, a rotunda in form, has a picturesque 
exterior, and the interior is exceedingly beautiful and 
effective. The library, though mainly for Parlia- 



Comments on Canada. 465 

mentary uses, is rich in Canadian history, and well up 
in polite literature. It contains about 90,000 volumes. 
In the Parliament building, which contains the two 
fine legislative Chambers, there are residence apart- 
ments for the Speakers of the Senate and of the House 
of Commons and their families, where entertainments 
are given during the session. The opening of Par- 
liament is an imposing and brilliant occasion, graced 
by the presence of the Governor-general, who is sup- 
posed to visit the Chambers at no other time in the 
session. Ottawa is very gay during the session, society 
and politics mingling as in London, and the English 
habit of night sessions adds a good deal to the excite- 
ment and brilliancy of the Parliamentary proceedings. 
The growth of the Government business and of 
official life has made necessary the addition of a third 
department building, and the new one, departing 
from the Gothic style, is very solid and tasteful. 
There are thirteen members of the Privy Council 
with portfolios, and the volume of public business 
is attested by the increase of department officials. 
I believe there are about 1500 men attached to the 
civil service in Ottawa. It will be seen at once 
that the Fe.deral Government, which seemed in a 
manner superimposed upon the provincial govern- 
ments, has taken on large proportions, and that there 
is in Ottawa and throughout the Dominion in federal 
officials and offices a strengthening vested interest in 
the continuance of the present form of government. 
The capital itself, with its investment in buildings, 
is a conservator of the state of things as they are. 
The Cabinet has many able men, men who Avould 
take a leading rank as parliamentarians in the Eng- 
30 



4:66 CommenU on Canada. 

lish Commons, and the Opposition benches in the 
House fiirnisli a good quota of the same material. 
The power of the premier is a fact as recognizable as 
in England. For many years Sir John A. Macdonald 
has been virtually the ruler of Canada. He has had 
the ability and skill to keep his party in power, while 
all the provinces have remained or become Liberal. I 
believe his continuance is due to his devotion to the 
national idea, to the development of the country, to 
bold measures — like the urgency of the Canadian 
Pacific Railway construction — for binding the prov- 
inces together and promoting commercial activity. 
Canada is proud of this, even while it counts its debt. 
Sir John is worshipped by his party, especially by the 
younger men, to whom he furnishes an ideal, as a 
statesman of bold conceptions and courage. He is 
disliked as a politician as cordially by the Opposition, 
who attribute to him the same policy of adventure 
that was attributed to Beaconsfield. Personally he 
resembles that remarkable man. Undoubtedly Sir 
John adds prudence to his knowledge of men, and his 
habit of never crossing a stream till he gets to it has 
gained him the sobriquet of " Old To-morroAV." He 
is a man of the world as well as a man of affairs, Avith 
a wide and liberal literary taste. 

The members of Government are well informed 
about the United States, and attentive students of its 
politics. I am sure that, while they prefer their sys- 
tem of responsible government, they have no senti- 
ment but friendliness to American institutions and 
people, nor any expectation that any differences will 
not be adjusted in a manner satisfactory and honorable 
to both. I happened to be in Canada during the fish- 



Comments on Canada. 467 

ery and " retaliation " talk. There was no belief that 
the " retaliation " threatened was anything more than 
a campaign measure; it may have chilled the rapport 
for the moment, but there was literally no excitement 
over it, and the opinion was general that retaliation as 
to transportation would bencht the Canadian railways. 
The eifect of the moment was that importers made 
large foreign orders for goods to be sent by Halifax 
that would otherwise have gone to United States 
ports. The fishery question is not one that can be 
treated in the space at our command. Naturally Can- 
ada sees it from its point of view. To a considerable 
portion of the maritime j^rovinces fishing means liveli- 
hood, and the view is that if the United States shares 
in it we ought to open our markets to the Canadian 
fishermen. Some, indeed, and these are generally ad- 
vocates of freer trade, think that our fishermen ought 
to have the right of entering the Canadian harbors 
for bait and shipment of their catch, and think also 
that Canada would derive an equal benefit from this; 
but probably the general feeling is that these priv- 
ileges should be compensated by a United States 
market. The defence of the treaty in the United 
States Senate debate was not the defence of the Ca- 
nadian Government in many particulars. For in- 
stance, it was said that the " outrages " had been dis- 
owned as the acts of irresponsible men. The Canadian 
defence was that the " outrages " — that is, the most 
conspicuous of them which appeared in the debate — 
had been dispro'oed in the investigation. Several of 
them, which excited indignation in the United States, 
were declared by a Cabinet minister to have no founda- 
tion in fact, and after proof of the falsity of the allega- 



4:68 Comments on Canada. 

tions the complainants were not again heard of. Of 
course it is known that no arrangement made by Eng- 
land can hold that is not materially beneficial to Can- 
ada and the United States; and I believe I state the best 
judgment of both sides that the whole fishery ques- 
tion, in the hands of sensible representatives of both 
countries, upon ascertained facts, could be settled be- 
tween Canada and the United States. Is it not natural 
that, with England conducting the negotiation, Canada 
should appear as a somewhat irresponsible litigating 
party bent on securing all that she can get ? But 
whatever the legal rights are, under treaties or the 
law of nations, I am sure that the absurdity of making 
a casus belli of them is as much felt in Canada as in 
the United States. And I believe the Canadians un- 
derstand tliat this attitude is consistent with a firm 
maintenance of treaty or other rights by the United 
States as it is by Canada. 

The province of Ontario is an empire in itself. It 
is nearly as large as France; it is larger by twenty- 
five thousand square miles than the combined six New 
England States, with Xew York, Xew Jersey, Pennsyl- 
vania, and Maryland. In its varied capacities it is the 
richest province in Canada, and leaving out the forests 
and minerals and stony wilderness between the Cana- 
dian Pacific and James Bay, it has an area large enough 
for an empire, which compares favorably in climate 
and fertility with the most prosperous States of our 
Union. The climate of the lake region is milder than 
that of southern Xew York, and a considerable part 
of it is easily productive of superior grapes, apples, 
and other sorts of fruit. The average yield of wheat, 
per acre, both fall and spring, for five years ending 



Comments on Canada. 469 

with 1880, was considerably above that of our best 
grain-producing States, from Pennsylvania to those 
farthest West. The same is true of oats. The compar- 
ison of barley is still more favorable for Ontario, and 
the barley is of a superior quality. On a carefully culti- 
vated farm in York county, for this period, the average 
was higher than the general in the province, being, of 
wheat, 25 bushels to the acre; barley, 47 bushels; oat?, 
66 bushels; pease, 32 bushels. It has no superior as a 
w^ool-producing and cattle-raising country. Its water- 
power is unexcelled; in minerals it is as rich as it is 
in timber ; every part of it has been made accessi- 
ble to market by railways and good highv/ays, which 
have had liberal Government aid; and its manufactures 
have been stimulated by a protective tariff. Better 
than all this, it is the home of a very superior people. 
There are no better anywhere. The original stock w^as 
good, the climate has been favorable, the athletic habits 
have given them vigor and tone and courage, and there 
prevails a robust, healthful moral condition. In any 
company, in the clubs, in business houses, in profession- 
al circles, the traveller is impressed with the physical 
development of the men, and even on the streets of 
the chief towns with the uncommon number of wom- 
en who have beauty and that attractiveness which 
generally goes with good taste in dress. 

The original settlers of Ontario w'ere 10,000 loyalists, 
who left Xew England during and after our Revolu- 
tionary War. They went to Canada impoverished, but 
they carried there moral and intellectual qualities of a 
high order, the product of the best civilization of their 
day, the best materials for making a State. I confess 
that I never could rid myself of the school-boy idea 



470 Comments on Canada. 

that the terms "British redcoat" and "enemy" were 
synonymous, and that a " Tory " was the worst charac- 
ter Providence had ever permitted to live. But these 
people, who were deported, or went voluntarily away 
for an idea, were among the best material we had 
in stanch moral traits, intellectual leadership, social 
position, and wealth; their crime was superior attach- 
ment to England, and utter want of sympathy with 
the colonial cause, the cause of " liberty " of the hour. 
It is to them, at any rate, that Ontario owes its solid 
basis of character, vigor, and prosperity. I do not 
quarrel with the pride of their descendants in the fact 
that their ancestors were U. E. (United Empire) loy- 
alists — a designation that still has a vital meaning to 
them. No doubt they inherit the idea that the revolt 
was a mistake, that the English connection is better 
as a form of government than the republic, and some 
of them may still regard the " Yankees " as their Tory 
ancestors did. It does not matter. In the develop- 
ment of a century in a new world they are more like 
us than they are like the English, except in a certain 
sentiment and in traditions, and in adherence to Eng- 
lish governmental ideas. I think I am not wrong in 
saying that this conservative element in Ontario, or 
this aristocratical element which believes that it can 
rule a people better than they can rule themselves, 
was for a long time an anti-progressive and anti-pop- 
ular force. They did not give up their power readily — 
power, however, which they were never accused of 
using for personal profit in the way of money. But 
I suppose that the " rule of the best " is only held to- 
day as a theory under popular suffrage in a responsi- 
ble government. 



Comments on Canada. 471 

The population of Ontario in 1886 was estimated at 
1,819,026. For tlie seven years from 1872-79 the gain 
was 250,782. For the seven years from 1879-86 the 
gain was only 145,459. These figures, which I take 
from the statistics of Mr. Archibald Blue, secretary of 
the Ontario Bureau of Industries, become still more 
significant when we consider that in the second period 
of seven years the Government had spent more money 
in developing the railways, in promoting immigration, 
and raised more money by the protective tariff for the 
establishing of industries, than in the first. The in- 
crease of population in the first period was 171- per 
cent.; in the second, only 8f per cent. Mr. Blue also 
says that but for the accession by immigration in the 
seven years 1879-86 the population of the province 
in 1886 would have been 62,640 less than in 1879. 
The natural increase, added to the immigration re- 
ported (208,000), should have given an increase of 
442,000. There was an increase of only 145,000. 
What became of the 297,000? They did not go to 
Manitoba— the census shows that. " The lamentable 
truth is that we are growing men for the United 
States." That is, the province is at the cost of raising 
thousands of citizens up to a productive age only to lose 
them by emigration to the United States. Compari- 
sons are also made with Ohio and Michigan, showing 
in them a proportionally greater increase in popula- 
tion, in acres of land under production, in manufactured 
products, and in development of mineral wealth. And 
yet Ontario has as great natural advantages as these 
neighboring States. The observation is also made 
that in the six years 1873-79, a period of intense busi- 
ness stringency, the country made decidedly greater 



473 Comme7)fs on Canada. 

progress tlii^n in the six years 1S79-S5, "a period of 
revival aiul booui, and vast expenditure of public 
money.'' Tlie reader will bear in mind that the re- 
peal (caused mainly by the increase of Canadian duties 
on American products) of the reciprocity treaty in 
1S6G (under which an international trade had grown 
to $70,000,000 annually) discouraged any annexation 
sentiment that may have existed, aided the scheme of 
confederation, and seemed greatly to stimulate Cana- 
dian manufactures, and the growth of interior and ex- 
terior commerce. 

AVe touch here not only political questions active in 
Canada, but economic problems aA'ecting both Canada 
and the United States. It is the criticism of the Lib- 
erals upon the ''development" policy, the protective 
tariff, the subsidy policy of the Liberal-Conservative 
party now in power, that a great show of activity is 
made Avithout any real progress either in wealth or 
population. To put it in a word, the Liberals want un- 
restricted trade with the United States, with England, 
or with the world — preferably with the United States. 
If this caused separation from England they would 
accept the consequences with composure, but they ve- 
hemently deny that they in any way favor annexa- 
tion because they desire free-trade. Pointing to the 
more rapid growth of the States of the I'nioii. their 
advantage is said to consist in having free exchange 
of commodities with sixty millions of people, spread 
over a continent. 

As a matter of fact it seems plain that Ontario would 
benetit and have a better development by sharing in 
this large circulation and exchange. Would the State 
of New York be injured by the prosperity of Ontario? 



Comments on Canada. 473 

Is it not benefited by the prosperity of its other neigh- 
bor, I*ennsylvania? 

Toronto represents Ontario. It is its monetary, in- 
tellectual, educational centre, and I may add that here, 
more than anywhere else in Canada, the visitor is con- 
scious of the complicated energy of a very vigorous 
civilization. The city itself has grown rapidly — an 
increase from 86,415 in 1881 to probably 170,000 in 
1888 — and it is growing as rapidly as any citj' on the 
continent, according to the indications of building, 
manufacturing, railway building, and the visible stir 
of enterprise. It is a very handsome and agreeable 
city, pleasant for one reason, because it covers a large 
area, and gives space for the display of its line build- 
ings. I noticed especially the effect of noble churches, 
occupying a square — ample grounds that give dignity 
to the house of God. It extends along the lake about 
six miles, and runs back about as far, laid out with 
regularity, and with the general effect of being level, 
but the outskirts have a good deal of irregularity and 
picturesqueness. It has many broad, handsome streets 
and several fine parks; High Park on the west is ex- 
tensive, the University grounds (or Queen's Park) are 
beautiful — the new and imposing Parliament Build- 
ings are being erected in a part of its domain ceded 
for the purpose; and the Island Park, the irregular 
strip of an island lying in front of the city, suggests 
the Lido of Venice. I cannot pause upon details, but 
the town has an air of elegance, of solidity, of pros- 
perity. The well-filled streets present an aspect of 
great business animation, which is seen also in the 
shops, the newspapers, the clubs. It is a place of 
social activity as well, of animation, of hospitality. 



474 Comments on Canada. 

There are a few delightful old houses, which date 
back to the Kew England loyalists, and give a certain 
flavor to the town. 

If I were to make an accurate picture of Toronto it 
would appear as one of the most orderly, well-gov- 
erned, moral, highly civilized towns on the continent 
— in fact, almost unique in the active elements of a 
high Christian civilization. The notable fact is that 
the concentration here of business enterprise is equalled 
by the concentration of religious and educational ac- 
tivity. 

The Christian religion is fundamental in the edu- 
cational system. In this province the public schools 
are Protestant, the separate schools Roman Catholic, 
and the Bible has never been driven from the schools. 
The result as to positive and not passive religious in- 
struction has not been arrived at without agitation. 
The mandatory regulations of the provincial Assem- 
bly are these : Every public and high school shall be 
opened daily with the Lord's Prayer, and closed with 
the reading of the Scriptures and the Lord's Prayer, 
or the prayer authorized by the Department of Edu- 
cation. The Scriptures shall be read daily and sys- 
tematically, without comment or explanation. No 
pupil shall be required to take part in any religious 
exercise objected to by parent or guardian, and an in- 
terval is given for children of Roman Catholics to 
withdraw. A volume of Scripture selections made 
up by clergymen of the various denominations or the 
Bible may be used, in the discretion of the trustees, 
who may also order the repeating of the ten com- 
mandments in the school at least once a week. 
Clergymen of any denomination, or their authorized 



\\ 



Comments on Canada. 475 

representatives, shall have the right to give religious 
instruction to pupils of their denomination in the 
school-house at least once a week. The historical 
portions of tlie Bible are given with more fulness 
than the others. Each lesson contains a continuous 
selection. The denominational rights of the pupils 
are respected, because the Scripture must be read 
without comment or explanation. The State thus dis- 
charges its duty without prejudice to any sect, but 
recosrnizes the truth that ethical and relimous in- 
struction is as necessary in life as any other. 

I am not able to collate the statistics to show the 
effect of this upon public morals. I can only testify 
to the general healthful tone. The schools of Toronto 
are excellent and comprehensive; the kindergarten is 
a part of the system, and the law avoids the difficulty 
experienced in St. Louis about spending money on 
children under the school age of six by making the 
kindergarten age three. There is also a school for 
strays and truants, under private auspices as yet, 
which reinforces the public schools in an important 
manner, and an industrial school of promise, on the 
cottage system, for neglected boys. The heads of 
educational departments whom I met were Christian 
men. 

I sat one day with the police-magistrate, and saw 
something of the workings of the Police Department. 
The chief of police is a gentleman. So far as I could 
gee there was a distinct moral intention in the admin- 
istration. There are special policemen of high char- 
acter, with discretionary powers, who seek to prevent 
crime, to reconcile differences, to suppress vice, to do 
justice on the side of the erring as well as on the side 



476 Comments on Canada. 

of the law. The central prison (all offenders sentenced 
for more than two years go to a Dominion peniten- 
tiary) is a well-ordered jail, without any special re- 
formatory features. I cannot even mention the courts, 
the institutions of charity and reform, except to say 
that they all show vigorous moral action and senti- 
ment in the community. 

The city, though spread over such a large area, 
permits no horse-cars to run on Sunday. There are 
no saloons open on Sunday; there are no beer-gardens 
or places of entertainment in the suburbs, and no Sun- 
day newspapers. It is believed that the effect of not 
running the cars on Sunday has been to scatter excel- 
lent churches all over the city, so that every small sec- 
tion has good churches. Certainly they are well dis- 
tributed. They are large and line architecturally; 
they are well tilled on Sunday; the clergymen are 
able, and the salaries are considered liberal. If I may 
believe the reports and ray limited observation, the 
city is as active religiously as it is in matters of edu- 
cation. And I do not see that this interferes with an 
agreeable social life, with a marked tendency of the 
women to beauty and to taste in dress. The tone of 
public and private life impresses a stranger as excep- 
tionally good. The police is free from political in- 
fluence, being under a commission of three, two of 
whom are life magistrates, and the mayor. 

The free-library system of the whole province is 
good. Toronto has an excellent and most intelligently 
arranged free public library of about 50,000 volumes. 
The library trustees make an estimate yearly of the 
money necessary, and this, under the law, must be 
voted bv the city council. The Dominion Govern- 



Comments on Canada. 477 

ment still imposes a duty on books purchased for the 
librarjr outside of Canada. 

The educational work of Ontario is nobly crowned 
by the University of Toronto, though it is in no sense 
a State institution. It is well endowed, and has a fine 
estate. The central building is dignified and an alto- 
gether noble piece of architecture, worthy to stand in 
its beautiful park. It has a university organization, 
with a college inside of it, a school of practical science, 
and afiiliated divinity schools of several denomi- 
nations, including the Koman Catholic. There are 
fine museums and libraries, and it is altogether well 
equipped and endowed, and under the presidency of 
Dr. Daniel Wilson, the venerable ethnologist, it is a 
great force in Canada. The students and officers 
wear the cap and gown, and the establishment has al- 
together a scholastic air. Indeed, this tradition and 
equipment — which in a sense pervades all life and 
politics in Canada — has much to do with keeping up 
the British connection. The conservation of the past 
is stronger than with us. 

A hundred matters touching our relations with 
Canada press for mention. I must not omit the labor 
organizations. These are in affiliation with those in 
the United States, and most of them are international. 
The plumbers, the bricklayers, the stone-masons and 
stone-cutters, the Typographical Union, the Brother- 
hood of Carpenters and Joiners, the wood-carvers, the 
Knights of Labor, are affiliated ; there is a branch of 
the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers in Canada; 
the railway conductors, with delegates from all our 
States, held their conference in Toronto last summer. 
The Amalgamated Society of Cari3enters and Joiners 



tJrTS Comments on Canada. 

is a British association, with headquarters in Man- 
chester, but it has an executive committee in Xew 
York, with which all the Canadian and American so- 
cieties communicate, and it sustains a periodical in 
New York. The Society of Amalgamated Engine 
Builders has its otfice in London, but there is an 
American branch, with which all the Canadian socie- 
ties work in harmony. The Cigar-makers' Union is 
American, but a strike of cigar-makers in Toronto 
was supported by the American ; so with the plumb- 
ers. It may be said generally that the societies each 
side the line will sustain each other. The trade or- 
ganizations are also taken up by women, and these 
all at^iliate with the United States. When a ''Na- 
tional *" union atfiliates witli one on the other side, the 
name is changed to " International." This union and 
interchange draws the laborers of both nations closer 
together. From my best information, and notwith- 
standing the denial of some politicians, the Canadian 
unions have love and sympathy for and with America. 
And this feeling must be reckoned with in speaking 
of the tendency to annexation. The present much- 
respected mayor of Toronto is a trade-unionist, and 
has a seat in the local parliament as a Conservative; 
he was once arrested for picketing, or some such 
trade-union performance. I should not say that the 
trades-unions are in favor of annexation, but they are 
not afraid to discuss it. There is in Toronto a society 
of a hundred young men, the greater part of whom 
are of the artisan class, who meet to discuss questions 
of economy and politics. One of their subjects was 
Canadian independence. I am told that there is 
among young men a considerable desire for iude- 



Comments on Canada. 479 

pendcnce, accompanied with a determination to "be on 
the best terms with the United States, and that as be- 
tween a connection with Great Britain and the United 
States, they would prefer the latter. In my own ob- 
servation the determination to be on good terms Avith 
the United States is general in Canada; the desire for 
independence is not. 

The frequency of the question, " What do you think 
of the future of Canada ?" shows that it is an open 
question. Undeniably the confederation, which seems 
to me rather a creation than a growth, works very 
well, and under it Canada lias steadily risen in the 
consideration of the world and in the development of 
the sentiment of nationality. But there are many 
points unadjusted in the federal and provincial rela- 
tions ; more power is desired on one side, more local 
autonomy on the other. The federal right of disallow- 
ance of local legislation is resisted. The stated distri- 
bution of federal money to the provinces is an anomaly 
w^hicli we could not reconcile with the public spirit and 
dignity of the States, nor recognize as a proper function 
of the Government. The habit of the provinces of 
asking aid from the central government in emergencies, 
and getting it, does not cultivate self-relianee, and 
the grant of aid by the Federal Government, in order 
to allay dissatisfaction, must be a growing embarrass- 
ment. The French privileges in regard to laws, lan- 
guage, and religion make an insoluble core in the 
heart of the confederacy, and form a compact mass 
which can be wielded for political purposes. This 
element, dominant in the province of Quebec, is aggress- 
ive. I have read many alarmist articles, both in Ca- 
nadian and English periodicals, as to the danger of 



480 Comments on Canada. 

this to the rights of Protestant communities. I lay 
no present stress upon the expression of the belief by 
intellio^ent men that Protestant communities mio-ht 
some time be driven to the shelter of the wider toler- 
ation of the United States, l^o doubt much feeling 
is involved. I am only reporting a state of mind 
which is of public notoriety; and I will add that men 
equally intelligent say that all this fear is idle; that, 
for instance, the French increase in Ontario means 
nothing, only that the habitant can live on the semi- 
sterile Laurentian lands that others cannot profitably 
cultivate. 

In estimating the idea the Canadians have of their 
future it will not do to take surface indications. One 
can go to Canada and get almost any opinion and 
tendency he is in search of. Party spirit — though 
the newspapers are in every way, as a rule, less sensa- 
tional than ours — runs as high and is as deeply bitter 
as it is with us. Motives are unwarrantably attributed. 
It is always to be remembered that the Opposition 
criticises the party in power for a policy it might not 
essentially change if it came in, and the party in pow- 
er attributes designs to the Opposition which it does 
not entertain : as, for instance, the Opposition party is 
not hostile to confederation because it objects to the 
" development " policy or to the increase of the federal 
debt, nor is it for annexation because it may favor 
unrestricted trade or even commercial union. As a 
general statement it may be saiid that the Liberal-Con- 
servative party is a protection party, a " development" 
party, and leans to a stronger federal government; 
that the Liberal party favors freer trade, would cry 
halt to debt for the forcing of development, and is 



Comments on Canada. 481 

jealous of provincial rights. Even the two parties 
are not exactly homogeneous. There are Conserva- 
tives who would like legislative union; the Liberals of 
the province of Quebec are of one sort, the Liberals 
of the province of Ontario are of another, and there 
are Conservative-Liberals as well as Radicals. 

The interests of the maritime provinces are closely 
associated with those of New England; popular votes 
there have often pointed to political as well as com- 
mercial union, but the controlling forces are loyal to 
the confederation and to British connection. Mani- 
toba is different in origin, as I pointed out, and in 
temper. It considers sharply the benefit to itself of 
the federal domination. My own impression is that it 
would vote pretty solidly against any present propo- 
sition of annexation, but under the spur of local griev- 
ances and the impatience of a growth slower than ex- 
pected there is more or less annexation talk, and one 
newspaper of a town of six thousand people has advo- 
cated it. Whether that is any more significant than 
the same course taken, by a Quebec newspaper recent- 
ly under local irritation about disallowance I do not 
know. As to unrestricted trade, Sir John Thompson, 
the very able Minister of Justice in Ottawa, said in a 
recent speech that Canada could not perniit her finan- 
cial centre to be shifted to Washington and her tariff 
to be made there; and in this he not only touched the 
heart of the difficulty of an arrangement, but spoke, I 
believe, the prevailing sentiment of Canada. 

As to the future, I believe the choice of a strict 
conservatism would be, first, the government as it is; 
second, independence; third, imperial federation : an- 
nexation never. But imperial federation is generally 
81 



4S2 Commoits on Canada. 

regarded as a wholly impracticable scheme. The 
Liberal would choose, first, the framework as it is, 
with modifications; second, independence, with freer 
trade; third, trust in Providence, without fear. It 
will be noted in all these varieties of predilection that 
separation from England is calmly contemplated as a 
definite possibility, and I have no doubt that it would 
be preferred rather than submission to the least loss 
of the present autonomy. And I must express the 
belief that, underlying all other thought, unexpressed, 
or, if expressed, vehemently repudiated, is the idea, 
widely prevalent, that some time, not now, in the dim 
future, the destiny of Canada and the United States 
will be one. And if one will let his imagination run 
a little, he cannot but feel an exultation in the con- 
templation of the majestic power and consequence in 
the world such a nation would be, bounded by three 
oceans and the Gulf, united under a restricted federal 
head, with free play for the individuality of every 
State. If this ever comes to pass, the tendency to it 
will not be advanced by threats, by unfriendly legis- 
lation, by attempts at conquest. The Canadians are 
as liigh-spirited as we are. Any sort of union that is 
of the least value could only come by free action of 
the Canadian people, in a growth of business interests 
undisturbed by hostile sentiment. And there could 
be no greater calamity to Canada, to the United 
States, to the English-speaking interest in the world, 
than a collision. Nothing is to be more dreaded for 
its effect upon the morals of the people of the United 
States than any war with any taint of conquest in it. 
There is, no doubt, with many, an honest preference 
for the colonial condition. I have heard this said: 



Comments on Canada. 483 

" We have the best government in the world, a respon- 
sible government, with entire local freedom. England 
exercises no sort of control; we are as free as a nation 
can be. We have in the representative of the Crown 
a certain conservative tradition, and it only costs us 
ten thousand pounds a year. We are free, we have 
little expense, and if we get into any difficulty there 
is the mighty power of Great Britain behind us !" 
It is as if one should say in life, I have no responsi- 
bilities; I have a protector. Perhaps as a " rebel," I 
am unable to enter into the colonial state of mind. 
But the boy is never a man so long as he is dependent. 
There was never a nation great until it came to the 
knowledge that it had nowhere in the world to go for 
help. 

In Canada to-day there is a growing feeling for in- 
dependence ; very little, taking the whole mass, for 
annexation. Put squarely to a poj^ular vote, it would 
make little show in the returns. Among the minor 
causes of reluctance to a union are distrust of the 
Government of the United States, coupled with the 
undoubted belief that Canada has the better govei'n- 
ment; dislike of our quadrennial elections; the want 
of a system of civil service, with all the turmoil of 
our constant official overturning ; dislike of our sensa- 
tional and irresponsible journalism, tending so often 
to recklessness ; and dislike also, very likely, of the 
very assertive spirit which has made us so rapidly 
subdue our continental possessions. 

But if one would forecast the future of Canada, he 
needs to take a Avider view than personal preferences 
or the agitations of local parties. The railway devel- 
opmentj the Canadian Pacific alone, has changed with- 



4S:1: Comments on Canada. 

ill live years the prospects of the political situation. 
It has brought together the widely separated prov- 
inces, and has given a new impulse to the sentiment 
of nationality. It has produced a sort of unity which 
no Act of Parliament could ever create. But it has 
done more than this : it has changed the relation of 
England to Canada. The Dominion is felt to be a 
much more important part of the British Empire than 
it was ten years ago, and in England within less than 
ten years there has been a revolution in colonial policy. 
AVith a line of fast steamers from the British Islands 
to Halifax, with lines of fast steamers from Vancouver 
to Yokohama, Hong-Kong, and Australia, with an all- 
rail transit, within British limits, through an empire 
of magnificent capacities, offering homes for any pos- 
sible British overflow, will England regard Canada as 
a weakness ? It is true that on this continent the day 
of dynasties is over, and that the people will deter- 
mine their own place. But there are great commer- 
cial forces at work that cannot be ignored, which seem 
strong enough to keep Canada for a long time on her 
present line of clevelopment in a British connection. 



THE END. 



TIIEm PILGEIMAGE. 

By Charles Dudley Wakner. Richly Illustrated by 
C. S. Keinhaiit. pp. viii., 364. 8vo, Half Leather, 

$3 00. 



Aside from the clelicions story— its wonderful portraitures of char- 
nctcr and its dramatic development— the book is precious to all who 
know anything about the great American watering-places, for it con- 
tains incomparable descriptions of those famous resorts and their 
frequenters. Even without the aid of Mr. Reinhart's brilliant draw- 
ings, Mr. Warner conjures up word-pictures of Cape May, Newport, 
Saratoga, Lake George, Kichfleld Springs, Niagara, the White Mount- 
ains, and all the rest, which sirike the eye like photographs, so clear 
is every outline. Ihit Mr, Reinhart's designs fit into the text so 
closely that we could not bear to part with a single one of them. 
"Their Pilgrimage" is destined, for an indefinite succession of bum- 
mers, to be a ruling favorite with all visitors of the mountains, the 
beaches, and the spas.— xV. 1'. Journal of d^mmerce. 

The author touches the canvas here and there with lines of color 
that fix and identify American character. Herein is the real charm 
for those who like it best, and for this one may anticipate that it will 
be one of the prominent books of the time. Of the fancy and humor 
of Mr. Warner, which in witchery of their play and power are quite 
independent of this or that subject, there is nothing to add. But ac- 
knowledgment is due Mr. Reinhart for nearly eighty finely conceived 
drawings. — Boston Globe. 

No more entertaining travelling companions for a tour of pleasure 
resorts could be wished for than those who in Mr. Warner's pages 
chat and lauizh, and skim the cream of all the enjoyment to be found 

from Mount Washington to the Sulphur Springs His pen-picturc8 

of the characters typical of each resort, of the manner of life followed 
at each, of the humor and absurdities peculiar to Saratoga, or New- 
port, or Bar Harbor, as the case may be, arc as good-natured as they 
are clever. The satire, when there is anj', is of the mildest, and the 
general tone is that of one glad to look on the brightest side of the 
cheerful, pleasure-seeking world with which he mingles. ... In Mr. 
Reinhart the author has an assistant who has done with his pencil 
almost exactly what Mr. Warner has accomplished with his pen.^ 
Christian Union, N. Y. 



Published by UARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

Ipr* The above work sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the 
United States or Canada, on receipt of the price. 



Ev W. IX IIOAVELLS. 

MODKKN ITALIAN POETS. K>>;\ys i\nd Vor^ions. With 
l\nti-ait$. U*mo, Halt" Clot h, ^J iV. . 

APRIL HOPES. rJmo, CloUi. $1 :h\ 

ANNIE KILBURN. l'3nio, Cloth. $1 50. 

THE MOrSE-TRAP, aiul Other Farces. Illustraua. ICiuo. 
Cloth, $1 lX\ 



A portfolio of doli.sihtsome stndies amoD? the Italian p«vts ; nins- 
!n«^ lu a s^^liUni smuKirr ftill lo the brim wiih ^mhI thiuffs;. . . . We 
vemnre to sav that no 'acute aud i^enetnxtinir "critic surpasy^es Mr. 
Howolls in true insight, in iv^lishtxt irv>ny, in effective and yet graceful 
treatment ofhii! theme, in that li>ht and indescribable touch that litts 
Toa orer a whole sea of froth auvt foam, and tlxvs your eyo. not on the 
rW>th and foam, but ou the solid objects, the true heart aiid soul of the 
theme.— tVif»>, X. Y. 

A more com lunion able, entertainins:, slimulatins: work than this 
b«"H^k has no; In'on printed f>'r many a day. It is a btv^k lo Ih> studied 
I'vrivately, to t>c re.id aUnid. to bocherished and quoted and reread 
inauv times, and evory reader of it will cry for more translations fivm 
the Italian by the same delisrht-conferring jhmk— OAttM-v Tribune. 

This isi a noble Vv^lume. the fi-uit of stm^ies iH^an twenty years ag>i 
ia Italy. . . . The subject is discussed with all the rare fas'cinativ»n of 
etyle aiid thought which Mr. llowells is s*> well qualitied to briiii: to it, 
aud the volume will In? treasnretl by every lover of p\.veiry of wliate\"er 
pericKi or dime.— rAri.<^"4in at Wort. N. Y. 

No liviusr writer could give us this Picture of a literary movement 
with such de'ioacy of apprtviation ana dis^crimination. The i>eriod 
cmbraceii is about a century; the names selecteit crMnt>r!se all the 
piX>ts which a survey of the" movement, now over, distinguishes as 
priucijvxl facl-.<rs in it. — Harf^A^ni C\}tniint, 



"April Hopes" is a sjHvimen of Mr. llowells's well-known consum- 
mate art as a delineator of young men and maidens, and a chn-inider 
of all the tlactua'.ions of Kn-e sifTairs. Fi>nn the life-like description of 
llarvarvi Class Day and its ivirticijvuits, in the oi>eningch;\pier», to the 
c nio'.asion of the story, Mr. llowells is at his Wst,— X Y. Journal tjf 
C r:?-;,-r,Y- 

Mr. Howel's never wTv>te a more bewitching bvv>k. It is tiseless to 
deny the ntrity and worth of the skill that can rei»rt so ]H^rfoctly aud 
with such exvinisite humor all the ftig;\cious and manifold emolious 
of the movle.n maideu aud her \ovft.—PkU«(i*iphiaJht*», 



rrBusiiED PY HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

tr J.np t\f thf abo9t «t>r*» tmt bjf wwtW, po«tttgt jprrjynVf, to anjf pmt 
t\f th« CniM ShUm tr OmaOa^ o:i recript t^f th* prkt. 



By AMl^^LIE EIVES. 

A BROTIIEK TO DRAGONS, ani^ Other Old-time 
Talks. Tost 8vo, Cloth, Extra, $1 00. 

VIllGINTA OF VIRGINIA. A Story. Illustrated 
Tost 8vo, Cloth, Extra, $1 00. 

Olio is permitted to (liscover qiinlities of mind nnd a proficiency and 
cnpacity in ait from wliicli Koiueliiiii-,' new and distinctively tlie work 
of^renius may bo anticipated iu American literature.— y^.s/wu (Jlobe. 

Miss Kives has ima^'ination, breadtli, and a darin-j and coura'f'e 
ofienest Ppoken of as masculine. Moreover, she is exiiuisitcly i)oc"t- 
ical, and lier ideals, with all the mishaps of her delincationp, are of an 
exalted order A'. 1'. Star. 

It was little more tlian two years ngo that Miss Rives made her first 
literary conquest, a conquest so complete and astonishin<,' as at once 
to f^ivo her fame. How well sho has t^ustaincd and added to tlio repu- 
tation she so suddenly won, we all know, and the permanency of that 
reputation demonstrates conclusively that her success did not depend 
upon the lucky strikin- of a i)opular fancy, hut tlnit it rests ui)ou en- 
during qualities that arc dcvclopintf more und more richlv year bv 
year — Jlichniond State. "' ^ 

It is evident that tiie author has imagination in an unusual degree 
much strength of expression, and skill in dcliueatiug character —I]osl 
ton Journal. 

There are few young writers who begin a promising career with so 
much spontaneity and charm of expression as is displayed bv Miss 
Rives.— AiVcmry m>rld, l^oston. ^ 

The trait which the author seems to take the most pleasure in de- 
picting IS the passionate loyalty of a girl to her lover or of a yonn<T 
wife to her husband, and her portrayal of this trait has feeli.x', and is 
sot off by an uucouventioual style and brisk moyemcnt.-The Book 

_ There is such a wealth of imagination, such an exuberance of strik- 
ing language in tlie productions of this author, as to attract and hold 
the rcixdcr.— Toledo lUade. 

Miss Rives is essentially a teller of love stories, and relates them 
M'lth such simple, straightforward grace that she at once captures the 

sympathy and interest of the reader There is a freshness of feelin.^ 

and a mingling of pathos and humor which are simply delicious —New 
London Telegraph. 

Pl'blisiied nv HARPER & BROTHERS, Xew York. 
IlAitPKu & RuoTiiKus xcill scud Cither of the above works by mail 



By CONSTANCE F. WOOLSOlSr. 

EAST ANGELS, pp. 593. 16mo, Cloth, $1 25. 

ANNE. Illustrated, pp. 540. 16mo, Cloth, $1 25. 

FOR THE MAJOR, pp. 208. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00. 

CASTLE NOWHERE, pp. 386. 16mo, Cbth, $1 00. 
(A New Edition.) 

RODMAN THE KEEPER. Southern Sketches, pp. 
840. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00. {A New Edition.) 



There is a certain bright cheerfulness ia Miss Woolsou's writiug 
•which invests all her characters with lovable qualities.— JcitisTi Advo' 
cate, N. Y. 

Miss Woolson is among onr few snccessful writers of interesting 
magazine stories, and her skill and power are perceptible in the de- 
lineation of her heroines no less than in the suggestive pictures of 
local \Ue.—Jetcish Messenger, N. Y. 

Constance Fenimore Woolson may .easily become the norelist 
laureate.— -Boston Globe. 

Miss Woolson has a graceful fancy, a ready wit, a polished style, and 
conspicuous dramatic power ; while her skill in the development of a 
story is very remarkable.— Z/oncZon Life. 

Miss Woolson never once follows the beaten track of the orthodox 
novelist, but strikes a new and richly loaded vein, which so far is all 
her own ; and thus we feel, on reading one of her works, a fresh sen- 
sation, and we put down the book with a sigh to think our pleasant 
task of reading it is finished. The author's lines must have fallen to 
ber in very pleasant places ; or she has, perhaps, -within herself the 
wealth of womanly love and tenderness she pours so freely into all 
she writes. Such books as hers do much to elevate the moral tone of 
the day— a quality sadly wanting in novels of the time —Whitehall 
Review, London. 



Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

JS'* The above works sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of tlie 
United States or Canada, on receipt of the prioe. 



